“He worked for them,” he said, voice rising as if they were in court, the case he’d been arguing for years. “Be careful when you put on a uniform. It’s what you become. Always the work. You know what he said to me? ‘I can’t wait for history to change things. I have to do my work now. After the war, we can do wonderful things.’ Space. We. Who? Mankind? After the war. He says this while the bombs are falling. While they’re putting people on trains. No connection. What are you going to do in space, I said, look down on the dead?” He cleared his throat, calming himself. “You agree with Lena. You think I’m harsh.”
“I don’t know,” Jake said, uncomfortable.
Professor Brandt stopped, looking at the schloss. “He broke my heart,” he said, so simply that Jake winced, as if a bandage had been lifted off the old man’s skin, exposing it. “She thinks I judge him. I don’t even know him,” he said, his words seeming to droop with him. But when Jake looked up, he stood as stiffly as before, his neck still held up by the high collar. He started into the park. “Well, now the Americans will do it.”
“We didn’t come here to judge anybody.”
“No? Then who else? Do you think we can judge ourselves? Our own children?”
“Maybe nobody can.”
“Then they will get away with it.”
“The war’s over, Professor Brandt. Nobody got away with anything,” Jake said, looking at the charred remains of the building.
“Not the war. No, not war. You know what happened here. I knew. Everybody knew. Grunewald Station. You know they liked to send them from there, not in the center, where people would see. Did they think we wouldn’t see there? Thousands of them in the cars. The children. Did we think they were going on holiday? I saw it myself. My god, I thought, how we will pay for this, how we will pay. How could it happen? Here, in my country, a crime like this? How could they do it? Not the Hitlers, the Goebbelses-those types you can see any day. In a zoo. An asylum. But Emil? A boy who played with trains. Blocks. Always building. I’ve asked myself a million times, over and over, how could this boy be a part of that?“
“And what answer did you get?” Jake said quietly.
“None. No answer.” He stopped to remove his hat, then took out a handkerchief and patted his forehead. “No answer,” he said again. “You know, his mother died when he was born. So there were just the two of us. Just two. I was too strict maybe. Sometimes I think it was that. But he was no trouble-quiet. A wonderful mind. You could see it working when he played-one block after another, just so. Sometimes I would sit there just watching his mind.”
Jake glanced over at him, trying to imagine him without the collar, stretched out on a child’s floor in a jumble of building blocks.
“And later, of course, at the institute, a wonder. Everyone predicted great things, everyone. Instead, this.” He spread his hand, taking in the past along with the torn-up garden. “How? How could such a mind not see? How can you see only the blocks, nothing else? A missing piece. Like all the rest of them, some missing piece. Maybe they never had it. But Emil? A good German boy-so what happened? To be with them.”
“He came back for you at the end.”
“Yes, do you know how? With SS. Do you expect me to get in that car, I said, with them?”
“The SS came for you?”
“For me? No. Files. Even then, with the Russians here, they came to get files out-imagine it. To save themselves. Did they think we didn’t know what they did? How can you hide something like that? Foolishness. Then here. ‘It’s the only way,’ Emil said, ‘they have a car, they’ll take you.’” He switched voices. “‘Tell the old shit to hurry or we’ll shoot him too,’ they said. Drunk, I think, but they did that, shot people, even in those last days, when everything was lost. Good, I said, shoot the old shit. That will be one bullet less. ‘Don’t talk like that,‘ Emil says. ’Are you crazy?‘ You’re the crazy one, I said. The Russians will hang you if you’re with these swine. ’No, Spandau’s open, we can get to the west.‘ I’d rather be with the Russians than with scum, I said. Arguing, even then.“ The SS voice again. ”’Leave him. We don’t have time for this.‘ And of course it was true-you could hear the artillery fire everywhere. So they left. That’s the last I saw him, getting into a car with SS. My son.“ His voice grew faint and stopped, as if he were rewinding a spool of film in his head, the scene played out again.
“Trying to save you,” Jake said.
But Professor Brandt ignored him, retreating back to conversation. “How is it you know him?”
“Lena worked with me at Columbia.”
“The radio, yes, I remember. A long time ago.” He glanced toward Lena, waiting for them near the edge of the garden where the sluggish water of the Spree made its bend. “She doesn’t look well.”
“She’s been sick. She’s better now.”
Professor Brandt nodded. “So that’s why she hasn’t come. She used to, after the raids, to see if I was all right. The faithful Lena. I don’t think she told him.”
