Father winced, his skin sallow. “But we can’t live without that job.”
“Well, at least work in a ventilated area.”
The former medical student returned with a crystal glass of water and set it on the table next to us. Could he not bring himself to hand it to Father? Little did he know Father was on his side. If he hadn’t been so sick, Father would have hidden a whole tramcar of those people in our back bedroom.
Katz shook a pill from a bottle into Father’s hand and then smiled. “No charge.”
Was that how they did it? Got you hooked, then charged more later? Our schoolbooks outlined the various strategies Jews used to undermine hardworking Germans. They were taking over the medical world. My professors said they were stingy with their research results and barely shared findings outside their own circles.
While Father took his pill, I browsed the titles on the bookshelf: Clinical Surgery. Stages in Embryo Development in Humans and Vertebrates. Whole shelves of green leather tomes with titles such as Atlas of the Outer Eye Diseases and Atlas of Syphilis and Venereal Diseases.
“You like to read?” Katz asked.
“Herta graduates soon from medical school,” Father said. “On an accelerated track. She’s interested in surgery.” I excelled in the few surgery classes I was allowed to take, but being a woman, under national socialism, I was not allowed to specialize in surgery.
“Ah, the surgeon,” Katz said, smiling. “King of doctors, or at least the surgeons think so.” He pulled one of the green books from the shelf. “Atlas of General Surgery. Have you read it?”
I said nothing as he pushed the book toward me. It seemed some Jews shared.
“Once you learn everything in here, bring it back, and I’ll give you another,” he said.
I did not touch it. What would people say, me taking the book of a Jew?
“You are too generous, Herr Doktor,” Father said.
“I insist,” Katz said, still holding the book out.
It looked heavy, the leather cover soft, embossed in gold. Could I borrow such a thing? I wanted it. Not so much to read it. I had textbooks. Ugly and secondhand, other people’s notes scratched in their margins, breadcrumbs in their gutters. This book was a beautiful thing. It would be nice to be seen with it, to walk into class and drop it casually on my desk. Mutti would rage at Father for allowing me to take it, but that alone was worth it.
I took the book from Katz and turned away.
“She’s speechless,” Father said. “And a fast reader. She’ll return it soon.”
—
IT WAS A USEFUL BOOK, in some ways more detailed than our medical school textbooks. In less than one week, I read from “Inflammation and Repair of Tissue” through “Cancer of the Lymphatic System.” The text and color plates provided additional insight into my father’s condition. Epithelioma. Sarcoma. Radium treatments.
Once I made it through the last chapter of Katz’s book, “Amputations and Prosthesis,” and practiced two new surgical knots described there, I walked to the Jew’s house to return it, hoping for another.
When I arrived, the front doors were wide open, and the SS were carrying cardboard boxes of books, Katz’s black medical bag, and a white wicker baby carriage, its wheels spinning in midair, to the curb. Someone was plunking out a German folk tune on Katz’s piano.
I held the book tight to my chest and left for home. Katz would not be coming back for it. Everyone knew of these arrests. Most of the time they happened in the night. It was sad to see someone’s possessions taken in such a way, but the Jews had been warned. They knew the Führer’s requirements. This was unfortunate, but not new, and it was for the good of Germany.
Less than a week later I spied a new family with five sons and a daughter carrying suitcases and a birdcage into that house.
—
MY MOTHER WAS HAPPY to work in her brother Heinz’s meat market, across the bridge in Oberkassel, a wealthy part of town, and she had gotten me a job there too. It was a small shop, but Heinz filled every inch with meat. He hung hams and long ribs of pork outside along the front of the store like socks on a clothesline and displayed whole hogs spread-eagled, bellies slit wide, glistening entrails scooped and saved.
At first I blanched at the sight, but as a medical student interested in surgery, I gradually grew to see beauty in the most unlikely places. The startling