Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel by Thaisa Frank

whose letters would be buried in his brother’s rye field and wanted to send a group letter asking forgiveness for not answering each one individually. But Sonia sat on the floor, looking like a mound of snow in her ermine coat, and began to cry. When Stumpf asked why she was crying, she said she missed every person in her family.

    Even the ones I didn’t like.

    Stumpf took off her coat and hugged her cautiously, feeling his bulk. Sonia was often sad, and this could trigger his own sadness—deep, inchoate, since he’d been sent below the earth. But if he concentrated on her body, he could almost enjoy her grief because she let him comfort her. Sometimes they ended up on his mattress—she crying, he groping. But not today. Sonia put on her coat and said she was too miserable for love.

    Please don’t go, said Stumpf. He grabbed one of Sonia’s ermine sleeves.

    If only we weren’t in the lowest tier! he said.

    What? Sonia pulled her arm away.

    If only there were a tier below us, said Stumpf. With people who could help.

    You mean people even lower than us with less air to breathe? How can you think that way? We already live like animals.

    Sonia smoothed the sleeve Stumpf had grabbed and walked downstairs. Moments later he saw her at her desk—white fingers poking from dark red gloves.

    She looked angry and irresistible. Stumpf went down the spiral staircase to ask her back. But he wanted to disguise his reason for spending any time away from work, so he investigated the paraphernalia against the walls. He knew he was the only example of diligence in the Compound and shouldn’t take too much time. So he sorted quickly, haphazardly, and knocked over a bolt of wool. The bolt fell on the telescope, the telescope fell on the tailor’s dummy, and the tailor’s dummy fell on a clock. The Scribes applauded, and Stumpf was about to creep to his shoebox when he smelled Elie Schacten’s tea-rose perfume.

    Dieter, she said softly. Just the person I want to see.

    Even today after she’d so precipitously taken what he wanted to bury, Stumpf was happy to be intercepted by Elie Schacten. Whenever he saw her, or anything that belonged to her, he felt inexplicable excitement, including her enormous desk, which faced the multitude of Scribes. It had an aura of omnipotence, dauntlessness—like Elie.

    It was to this desk that he pulled up a chair. Elie put aside a list—she never pretended to monitor the Scribes—and gave him a piece of brandied chocolate.

    Stumpf savored the brandy exploding in his mouth. Elie gave him three more pieces. He didn’t like the way Elie got favors, but he relished the chocolate and schnapps she brought to the Compound and was sure they’d make perfect colleagues if only she believed, as he did, that Germany would win the war. He looked at Elie dolefully and hoped she’d know what he was thinking. She smiled at him and said:

    I feel sorry for Goebbels, Dieter. He’s got too much on his mind these days.

    It’s hard to be on the edge of victory, said Stumpf.

    Exactly, said Elie. And Gerhardt doesn’t want to bother him. But the orders are confusing. So it might help if you could call him. You know how to talk to him.

    Stumpf had a tick over his left eye. It began to pulse.

    No one calls Goebbels, he said.

    But you have clout, said Elie.

    Of course I have clout, he said. But the more clout you have the more careful you are about using it.

    Elie touched his arm and bent her head close. Once more he was enveloped in tea-rose. Maybe the optometrist could come here and write the letter himself, she said. After all, Heidegger wrote it to him.

    Elie’s hand felt delicious, but the tick was distracting.

    That’s impossible, whispered Stumpf. We only write to the dead. They need us. They’re waiting to hear.

    That’s why the orders are confusing, said Elie. By the way…I just heard a story about someone who got out of Auschwitz.

    You don’t mean that fucking angel they’re