Garden of Beasts

his father’s eyes.
    “Tell me,” Kohl said kindly.
    “Because . . .”
    “Go on.”
    “Because in December everyone must join the Hitler Youth. And now . . . well, you won’t let me.”
    Ah, this again. A recurring problem. But was this new information true? Would Hitler Youth be mandatory? A frightening thought. After the National Socialists came to power they folded all of Germany’s many youth groups into the Hitler Youth and the others were outlawed. Kohl believed in children’s organizations—he’d been in swimming and hiking clubs in his teen years and loved them—but the Hitler Youth was nothing more than a pre-army military training organization, manned and operated, no less, by the youngsters themselves, and the more rabidly National Socialist the junior leaders, the better.
    “And now you wish to join?”
    “I don’t know. Everyone makes fun of me because I’m not a member. At the football game today, Helmut Gruber was there. He’s our Hitler Youth leader. He said I better join soon.”
    “But you can’t be the only one who isn’t a member.”
    “More join every day,” Günter replied. “Those of us who aren’t members are all treated badly. When we play Aryans and Jews in the school yard, I’m always a Jew.”
    “ What do you play?” Kohl frowned. He had never heard of this.
    “You know, Father, the game Aryans and Jews. They chase us. They aren’t supposed to hurt us—Doctor-professor Klindst says they aren’t. It’s supposed to be tag only. But when he isn’t looking they push us down.”
    “You’re a strong boy and I’ve taught you how to defend yourself. Do you push them back?”
    “Sometimes, yes. But there are many more who play the Aryans.”
    “Well, I’m afraid you can’t go to another school,” Kohl said.
    Günter looked at the cloud of pipe smoke rising to the ceiling. His eyes brightened. “Maybe I could denounce someone. Maybe then they’d let me play on the Aryan side.”
    Kohl frowned. Denunciation: another National Socialist plague. He said firmly to his son, “You will denounce no one. They would go to jail. They could be tortured. Or killed.”
    Günter frowned at his father’s reaction. “But I would only denounce a Jew, Father.”
    His hands trembling, heart pounding, Kohl was at a loss for words. Forcing himself to be calm, he finally asked, “You would denounce a Jew for no reason?”
    His son seemed confused. “Of course not. I would denounce him because he is a Jew. I was thinking . . . Helen Morrell’s father works at Karstadt department store. His boss is a Jew but he tells everyone he’s not. He should be denounced.”
    Kohl took a deep breath and, weighing his words like a rationing butcher, said, “Son, we live in a very difficult time now. It is very confusing. It’s confusing to me and itmust be far more confusing to you. The one thing that you must always remember—but never must say out loud—is that a man decides for himself what is right and wrong. He knows this from what he sees about life, about how people live and act together, how he feels. He knows in his heart what is good and bad.”
    “But Jews are bad. They wouldn’t teach us that in school if it weren’t true.”
    Kohl’s soul shivered in rage and pain to hear this. “You will not denounce anyone, Günter,” he said sternly. “That is my wish.”
    “All right, Father,” the boy said, walking away.
    “Günter,” Kohl said.
    The boy paused at the door.
    “How many in your school have not joined the Youth?”
    “I can’t say, Father. But more join every day. Soon there won’t be anyone left to play the Jew but me.”
    •   •   •
    The restaurant that Käthe had in mind was the Lutter and Wegner wine bar, which, she explained, was well over a hundred years old and an institution in Berlin. The rooms were dark, smoky and intimate. And the place was devoid of Brownshirts, SS and suited men wearing red armbands with the hooked, surely-you-know cross.
    “I brought you here because, as I said, it used to be the haunt of people like you and me.”
    “You and me?”
    “Yes. Bohemians. Pacifists, thinkers, and, like you, writers.”
    “Ah, writers. Yes.”
    “E.T.A. Hoffmann would find inspiration here. He drank copious champagne, whole bottles of it! And would then write all night. You’ve read him, of course.”
    Paul hadn’t. He nodded yes.
    “Can you think of a better writer of the German romantic era? I can’t. The