The Last Days Read Online Free Page B

as a child, Lotte rediscovered a feeling of insouciance. Eva’s peals of laughter effaced the memory of Stefan’s bottomless anguish. She forgot about the endless flow of handwritten pages which Stefan produced as he neared the completion of his autobiography, pages that Lotte would have to type out on an old Remington, some of whose keys were broken, working day after day without ever taking a break. She had worn her eyes out trying to understand each of the writer’s words, querying the meaning behind every deletion and judging whether his constructions were well balanced. She valued her eyesight highly. All that travelling as well as her illness hadn’t prematurely aged them, but the hours she spent reading that manuscript were going to damage them in the long run. Nevertheless, what did she care about her eyesight when all was said and done, so long as she was by his side?
    Eva and Lotte had spent one last day together in Manhattan before the couple left for Rio. They had sat down on a restaurant’s patio. Three young Americans lunching at a nearby table had come over to ask if the ladies would care to join them. The episode lasted only a few minutes, but it sent a wave of sensual pleasure rippling through them.
    They had gone into a little shop on the corner of 42nd Street and Madison Avenue, a tailor’s emporium whose window displayed sumptuous dresses at affordable prices. Lotte had hesitated on the threshold and Eva had dragged her in. Lotte needed a dress for her new life in Brazil. On entering the boutique thetailor, a short, corpulent man who was very elegantly attired, had welcomed them as though they’d been oriental princesses. He had brought them some tea and unwrapped entire collections for them.
    “You know, people are wrong not to buy any suits and dresses. They’re going to need them for V-Day. Because we’re going to win, and when I say ‘we’, I mean the ‘People of the Book’. Can the Book-Burning People stand a chance against us?… By the sound of your accent I would say that you’re from… Cologne?… Frankfurt and Katowice? Me, I’m from Stuttgart… And when did you leave behind that dear motherland of ours that devours its children? Thirty-Three—you’re a real oracle aren’t you! I waited until Thirty-Six, and, what’s worse, I left my daughter Gilda there. Her husband didn’t want to leave. He said the situation couldn’t get any worse… what an idiot that Ernst Rosenthal was! My wife had predicted he wouldn’t be a good husband, my dear Masha, may her soul rest in peace, she didn’t survive the journey. Right after Hermann Flechner got here, having left his son behind in Munich, they were all deported out east. East, as if that were a place fit for Jews!? As soon as the war’s over, I’m going to box that Ernst Rosenthal’s ears… You know, in Frankfurt I attended my cousin Rivkah’s wedding in the big synagogue on Börnestrasse… What’s that? Your father was that synagogue’s rabbi? What a small… Here we are in August 1941 in New York and you tell me that your grandfather wed Rivkah and Franz Hesen, may his soul rest in peace. Franz met his end when the SA threw him out of a window in May 1933. Is there really no such thing as fate, madam? I haven’t even asked you your name madam… Zweig… Do you mean to say you’re Mrs Stefan Zweig? Please forgive me, I must sit down, this is all a bit too much for me, first your grandfather officiates at my cousin’s wedding, then you tell me all those books my daughter devours were written by yourhusband. Forgive me, I must seem a little too joyful considering the dark times we live in, but you should be wary of appearances , I’m no fool, I know all too well what the Reich does to our people, but were I to fall into melancholia, I might as well go ahead and close my shop, and then what would I do with the remainder of my days, without my wife and daughter? Nor am I going to spend all day waiting at Ellis Island,