The Last Days Read Online Free Page A

night, doctors would be at her bedside injecting drugs into her veins. Unfortunately, all that New York air wasn’t clean enough for her lungs. Or maybe all the wind stopped at the city limits. Or the breeze that blew over the Hudson was too weak. Or it was all too late and there wasn’t any hope left for her. She had contracted that terrible influenza. The fever had made her lose her mind. They had thought she’d been at death’s door. He’d spent a whole night nestled by her side on that hospital bed. When she had regained consciousness, she’d heard him mutter some words—but maybe her fever was making her hallucinate? He’d spoken into the abyss, stricken with grief. Her lips had trembled. She’d sworn he’d been addressing the dead, entreating them, telling them about his regrets. He felt remorse for having dragged his wife along on this escapade. His muttering had soothed her. She had fallen asleep lulled by the sound of his voice. After a few days, the fever had calmed down and she no longer wheezed like a coffee pot. Warmth flowed back into her fingertips. She was cured. Those frightening weeks had furnished them with ultimate proof that they didn’t belong in New York.
    It was a shame as she would have gladly stayed, even though the weather didn’t do her any good, even though the lethargy of urban life and car pollution were asphyxiating her. Manhattan was enchanting. At the end of a night’s coughing fit, she had seen the city stir and spring to life by the light of dawn through her hotel window. She had gone down to the street. Walking past those skyscrapers had given her vertigo. Everything lookedintensely romantic. The streets pulsed with power and a feeling of the unreal. The men and women who crossed her path looked like a new type of human being, one that inspired admiration. In the thick of those crowds, behind those tall walls, she’d imagined herself as the lead actress in a film, a colour film whose images superimposed themselves on the black scenes of that German film. She’d loved losing herself in the crowds on Fifth Avenue at closing time, when employees filed out of their offices—even though she still nursed the terrifying memory of those organized German masses and their outstretched arms. She had strolled through Central Park. The shadows cast by those towers didn’t frighten her in the slightest. When a ray of light would slide between two buildings, she would tell herself that the light had fallen from the sky. She would stand still in the middle of the pavement, her head craned up to those heights, her eyes half-shut, wrapped in that celestial brightness. Someone bumped into her. She scurried back to the shadows. She didn’t like anyone touching her. The brutal touch of strangers sent the noise of footsteps on the pavement, the shouting of the uniformed mobs, resonating through her mind, which she believed was just as ill as her body. She took a little sidestep and found herself once again in the light, where the air became lighter, where life became lighter.
    In New York, Lotte had met up with Eva, her niece, who was the daughter of Manfred, her brother. Eva and Manfred were all that was left of her family. Her mother, uncles, aunts and cousins had chosen to stay in Frankfurt and Katowice, the town in Silesia where Lotte was from and which she had fled in 1933. She hadn’t heard from any of them in nearly a year. The courier must not have got through, Stefan had argued.
    Lotte had seen her mother staring at her out of Eva’s eyes. The resemblance was striking. According to tradition, granddaughtersbore their grandmother’s names. When Lotte had walked through the streets of Brooklyn with Eva, it had been as if she’d been strolling arm in arm with her mother around the Jewish quarter in Katowice. The department stores’ window displays, the restaurant patios and cafés had filled the adolescent with wonder and awe. On seeing the happiness of someone she still thought of