Garden of Beasts

smuggle the boys out of Germany in one of his company’s trucks. Every Sunday morning Unger made a run to Holland to deliver his candy and pick up ingredients. It was felt that with all the visitors coming into the country for the Olympics the border guards would be preoccupied and pay no attention to a commercial truck leaving the country on a regular run.
    But could they trust him with their lives?
    There was no apparent reason not to. Unger and Albrecht had been friends. They were like-minded. He hated the National Socialists.
    Yet nowadays there were so many excuses for betrayal.
    He could denounce us because it’s Sunday. . . . 
    And there was another reason behind Kurt Fischer’s hesitation to leave. The young man was a pacifist and Social Democrat mostly because of his parents and his friends; he’d never been very active politically. Life to him had been hiking and girls and traveling and skiing. But now that the National Socialists were in power, he was surprised to find within him a strong desire to fight them, to enlighten people about their intolerance and evil. Perhaps, he debated, he should stay and work to bring them down.
    But they were so powerful, so insidious. And so deadly.
    Kurt looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It had run down. He and Hans were always forgetting to wind it. This had been their father’s job and the image of the still timepiece made Kurt’s heart ache. He pulled his pocket watchout and checked the time. “We have to go now or call him and tell him we’re not doing it.”
    Tink, tink, tink . . . The knife resumed its cymbal tapping on the plate.
    Then long silence.
    “I say we stay,” Hans said. But he looked at his brother expectantly; there’d always been rivalry between the two, yet the younger would abide by any decision the older made.
    But will I decide correctly?
    Survival . . .
    Kurt Fischer finally said, “We’re going. Get your pack.”
    Tink, tink . . .
    Kurt shouldered his knapsack and glared defiantly at his brother. But Hans’s mood changed like spring weather. He suddenly laughed and gestured at their clothing. They were dressed in shorts, short-sleeved shirts and hiking boots. “Look at us: Paint us brown and we’d be Hitler Youth!”
    Kurt couldn’t help but smile. “Let’s go, comrade,” he said sarcastically, the term the same one used by Stormtroopers and Youth to refer to their fellows.
    Refusing a last look around the apartment, for fear he’d start to cry, Kurt Fischer opened the door and they stepped into the corridor.
    Across the hallway was stocky, apple-cheeked Mrs. Lutz, a War widow, scrubbing her doormat. The woman usually kept to herself but would sometimes stop by certain residents’ apartments—only those who met her strict standards of neighborliness, whatever those might be—to deliver her miraculous foodstuffs. She considered the Fischers her friends and over the years had left presents of lung pudding, prune dumplings, head cheese, pickledcucumbers, garlic sausage and noodles with tripe. Just seeing her now, Kurt began to salivate.
    “Ach, the Fischer brothers!”
    “Good morning, Mrs. Lutz. You’re hard at work early.”
    “It will be hot again, I’ve heard. Ach, for some rain.”
    “Oh, we don’t want anything to interfere with the Olympics,” Hans said with a hint of irony. “We’re so looking forward to seeing them.”
    She laughed. “Silly people running and jumping in their undergarments! Who needs them when my poor plants are dying of thirst? Look at my John-go-to-bed-at-noons outside the door. And the begonias! Now, tell me, where are your parents? Still on that trip of theirs?”
    “In London, yes.” Their parents’ political difficulties were not common knowledge and the brothers were naturally reluctant to mention them to anyone.
    “It’s been several months. They better get home soon or they won’t recognize you. Where are you off to now?”
    “Hiking. In the Grünewald.”
    “Oh, it’s lovely there. And much cooler than in the city.” She returned to her diligent scrubbing.
    As they walked down the stairs Kurt glanced at his brother and noticed that Hans had quickly grown sullen again.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “You seem to think this city is the devil’s playground. But it’s not. There are millions of people like her.” He nodded back up the stairs. “Good people, kind people. And we’re leaving all of them behind. And to go to what? A place where we know no