What's In A Name Read Online Free PDF Page A

again. “I could not leave Germany,” he said. “Except for a little while, in Austria.”
    â€œWell, we thought of Austria as Germany, didn’t we?” Altman asked. “The Pan-Germanic peoples. At least that was what the slogans said.”
    The old man nodded. “I remember the slogans.”
    â€œAustria,” Altman whispered softly, now caught up in the history of his own life. “My father had business there. I was thinking of being in this business, but I wasn’t cut out for it.” He felt a tense chuckle break from him. “I was always more the scholarly type. I wanted to teach at the university, to write books.” He shrugged. “But more than anything, I wanted to collect them. Especially German books.”
    â€œThe call of the Fatherland,” the old man whispered.
    He was staring into the empty bowl of his soup, his gaze curiously intense, as if he were reading a lost future there.
    â€œThe call of the Fatherland,” Altman repeated. “That’s quite well put.” He smiled. “Perhaps you should have been a writer.”
    The old man’s fingers crawled over to the package, then spread over it like the legs of a spider. “I have only this.”
    â€œAnd you say that you have had it for a long time?” Altman asked.
    â€œI wrote it after the war,” the old man said. “It reminds me of what I was.”
    Altman suddenly felt a spike of dread move through him, sharp and tingling, like an electric charge. Once again, he thought of the old man’s mention of crime, and once again he wondered if the book was a confession of some unspeakable act.
    â€œIt is about the way things were in our country,” the old man said. A dark sparkle came into his eyes. “You remember how they were, I’m sure.”
    Altman did indeed remember how things had been in Germany after the war, the rise of extreme parties, the street fighting, a country coming apart at the seams.
    â€œGermany was headed for an abyss,” Altman said. “Communists and fascists attacking each other. The twin plagues. At the time, the direction seemed clear, and it was a very scary one.”
    â€œIs that why you left?” the old man asked. “Because you were afraid of what might happen?”
    â€œYes,” Altman admitted.
    â€œI left because of Elsa,” the old man said.
    â€œElsa?”
    â€œShe was so sweet,” the old man added. “So kind to me. She worked in the hotel.” He looked at Altman knowingly. “You know what that means?”
    â€œI do, yes,” Altman answered.
    â€œShe was murdered.”
    â€œMurdered?” Altman asked.
    â€œThey said it was a rich man,” the old man said. “A rich man who lived in Vienna.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œIt made me very angry that so sweet a girl should be murdered.”
    â€œNo doubt,” Altman said cautiously, now once again unaccountably tense in the old man’s presence, like a man who suddenly sees a snake in the tall grass.
    â€œA Jew,” the old man added. “The rich man from Vienna.”
    Altman felt a wave of relief. He’d wondered if the old man had somehow thought his father the murderer. But luckily, he thought Elsa’s murderer a Jew, which certainly removed his father from the list of suspects.
    The old man nodded toward the package. “It’s all in there. How I felt in those days.”
    â€œSo your book is a memoir?” Altman asked, now hoping to get away from the disturbing subject of a poor, heart-of-gold prostitute murdered by a sinister and stereotypically wealthy Jew.
    â€œIt is, yes,” the old man answered. “No one wanted to publish it. They said I had a silly name. Which is true. It held me back in those days after the war. You can’t rise in the world if you have a silly name.”
    Altman felt the normal urge to ask what this name was, but he could see that it