The Second Son

“How?” said Edelbaum.

They both stared across at Lotte. She had nothing but memory now, stripped of hope and more desperate by the minute. How easy to shatter a life, thought Hoffner, drain the strength from it, and make courage something only vaguely remembered.

“Wilson never came?” he said.

It took Edelbaum a moment to answer. He watched his daughter and said absently, “Who?”

“The man from Pathe Gazette. He never came by?”

Edelbaum tried to think. It was too much. He shook his head, and Hoffner wondered if this had been kindness or cowardice on Wilson’s part.

Edelbaum said, “Two SS came, or Sipo, I don’t know which. I had to sedate my wife after.”

Hoffner heard the fear, and Lotte became quieter. Her head was in her mother’s lap, and she stared out across the carpet. Hoffner said, “How soon could you go?”

Edelbaum turned to him. There was genuine hurt in his eyes. “Go? This is my daughter.”

“Out of Germany,” Hoffner explained. “All of you. How soon?”

Edelbaum struggled to understand.

Hoffner said, “You need to get out. You know it. You need to take Lotte and the boy and get out.”

Edelbaum began to shake his head, and Hoffner said, “This is what it will be every day from now on. This fear. And it will get worse. I have friends. They can do this for you. You get your affairs in order, and you go. You understand what I’m saying?”

Edelbaum stared at Hoffner. He waited before saying, “Leave Berlin?”

Hoffner realized it was a broken man who now gazed up at him.

“I’m giving you my grandson,” Hoffner said. “I need to know you understand that.”

Hoffner saw Lotte raise her head from her mother’s lap. She was staring across at him, her eyes no longer lost. She began to push herself up.

Hoffner said, “She needs to sleep.”

Edelbaum turned and saw Lotte. He began to nod. “Yes, of course.” He spoke to his wife, “Keep her still. I’ll get my bag.”

Edelbaum moved toward the hall, and Hoffner followed. He then walked to the stairs and headed up. The boy was known to sleep through anything. Hoffner pushed open the door and saw the small lamp at the edge of the room, its glow making it just to the skirt of the bed.

Mendy was on his back, one arm tossed above his head and resting on the pillow. His knees were splayed and high, and his body lay absolutely still. He never moved in sleep. Hoffner had spent hours watching him, staring at the little shape in all its contortions. He leaned over and picked up the books that were strewn across the sheets. He stacked them and laid them against the wall. Mendy was known to sense when a book had gone missing from his bed, an eye quickly opening, then closing. Hoffner set them within arm’s reach and pulled the blanket up over the waist.

This was a perfect boy, he thought, quiet and still, and untouched by anything beyond that doorway. Hoffner wondered how such things were possible. He imagined they had always been possible-even with his own-but why try to understand that now? It was never enough to want to protect, or to recognize the frailty. It was only in the doing, and that had always been just out of reach. He stared down at this living boy and knew there was no way to remedy that. Hoffner placed a hand on the boy’s cheek. He felt the warmth and the smoothness of it, and he let himself believe he could hear the tiny voice. Here, he had no need for anything else.

He pulled his hand back and saw paper and pen on the small table. He sat on Mendy’s stool, took a sheet, and wrote in the dim light.

The note was folded, with Lotte’s name written across it, when Hoffner heard her behind him. He turned and saw her in the doorway. How long she had been there was impossible to say.

She said, “You can tell me what it says now, if you want.”

Hoffner looked up at her. He shook his head. “Better to read it.”

“We’re going. It’s been decided. My father says you’ll come with us.”

Hoffner waited. “I’ve tried the going, Lotte. It doesn’t much work for me.”

“Mendy won’t understand.”

“No, he probably won’t. You’ll help him with that.”

“Did he die in peace?” She spoke with no trace of empathy.

“Yes,” he said. “I think he did.”

There was no reason to tell her how much Georg had loved her, or how the boy had been his life. She knew. She would find that comfort. What she could never know was the unimagined horror and emptiness of his death.

Hoffner stood and moved across to her. He held out the note.

“It’s nothing too important,” he said. “The names of people who can help you, where there’s a bit of money. Something for Mendy. You’ll read it after I go.”

She stared up at him. She had always been able to see so quickly through to the heart of things. “And where is it you’re going, Nikolai?”

He tried a quiet shrug. “Just out. Find a drink.”

He saw the first break in her otherwise flawless stare. “Is that it?”

Hoffner had spent a lifetime showing nothing. It came so easily. “There are plenty of places to find a drink tonight. I’ll make my way.”

He needed her to believe the lie. He needed her to give him this, here at the end. But her own sadness was too much to leave any kindness for others.

She said, “I would never forgive you for that, Nikolai. Neither would Mendy.”

Hoffner looked into her face. So much pain, he thought, and so much more to wait for. He tried a weak smile. If nothing else, he had to save them from that.

“Mendy needs to be safe. You need to be safe. Safe no longer exists here.”

“And you couldn’t find that safety with us?”

Again Hoffner waited. “He won’t always be a boy.”

She stared up at him, and he brought his arms around her. Her eyes were wet when she let go. She wiped them with her handkerchief.

Hoffner took a last glance at Mendy and headed for the stairs.

The deep of night came more quickly than Hoffner expected. This far west the trees were more sparse, the sky a churning of clouds and stars.

The sound of water against stone beat out a quiet rhythm. He stared down into the canal and saw the strength of the current. He remembered how quickly it had taken little Rosa Luxemburg, a minute or two, a sudden swirling, and then gone.

Hoffner had imagined he would feel more at this moment, a chance to regret or despair. Instead, he stared with a kind of childlike wonder at the coal black of the water, and thought, It isn’t much of anything to stop a life. It isn’t much to know what has come before, and to know how it must weigh on what is to come. And it is only then, in that absolute silence, that a man can say, This is enough. No matter what longing or hope live on and elsewhere, that silence ca

There was a popping overhead, and he looked up to see the sky filling with lights. They were sending the games off with fireworks. How easy to imagine Berlin covered in light. How easy to watch the lights fade and convince himself to embrace the chill of his own cowardice and fade away with them.

But not tonight, he thought. Not when he knew which life it was that had come to an end. There was nothing here. Nothing. And there was no reason to mourn it.

Hoffner stepped back. Out by the trees, a second set of lights flashed. Car lights. Hoffner stared out across the water for a moment longer and moved toward the car.

Inside, Radek was smoking.

“We need to go,” Radek said. “He’ll fly with or without you.”

Hoffner got in, and Radek put the car in gear. He said, “You saw what you needed?”

“You have the papers?”

There was a tinge of frustration in the answer. “Yes, Nikolai. I have the papers. They’re still in my pocket.”