Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel by Thaisa Frank

Author:Thaisa Frank
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Heidegger, World War, Jewish, Martin, 1939-1945, Holocaust, Literary, General, Germany, Jewish (1939-1945), Historical, War & Military, Scribes, Fiction, Scribes - Germany, 1939-1945 - Germany
ISBN: 9781582437194
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2010-11-01T10:00:00+00:00

Dear Marek,

Letters are being passed all the time and prisoners have managed to bribe pens from guards. Even in this unspeakable place people write to each other constantly. God willing, I’m going to see you soon.

Love always,

Urajsz

Before Lodenstein came to the Compound, the SS officer who evaporated in Denmark told him the idea of answering letters from the dead had been the object of conversation for days after the meeting at the Palace of the Occult. But when Hanussen was shot, anyone who mentioned his name or referred to his ideas was shot too. It was mere luck that no one made a connection between Hanussen’s vision and the Thule Society’s obsession with answering letters written by the dead. Maybe Hitler had forgotten. But Lodenstein doubted Goebbels had: Goebbels remembered everything. And Goebbels condoned Stumpf’s post, knowing Stumpf was driven to answer the dead and didn’t care about keeping records. Stumpf’s appointment must have been Goebbels’s concession to the Thule Society, in spite of his disdain for the occult. And the motto Like Answers Like had come from him.

Now the man on the hunter-green bench retrieved every detail of Hanussen’s speech at the black and gold Palace of the Occult. He retrieved them from the jewel-like letters between the bricks, which he could now read. After he’d read everything, the walls stopped undulating, and Lodenstein came down from the ceiling and slid inside the man who looked just like him. He put his hands in his pockets and realized the letters of the alphabet weren’t in the wall but on a piece of paper. He stood up and felt his legs, his arms, the cramped enclosure. And when the little hatch opened again, he cleared his sandpaper throat and shouted the name HANUSSEN! in a hoarse voice—so loudly the face stepped back, and he heard keys drop to the floor.

HANUSSEN! he rasped again. Tell Joseph Goebbels that Lodenstein remembers Hanussen.

The hatch closed, the sound of the keys grew fainter, and Lodenstein was alone. He wondered whether he’d be shot for mentioning Hanussen, or grilled about the meeting at the Palace of the Occult. By the time the keys jangled again he was trembling, but the officer bowed and gestured toward the winding steps that led to the Mosaic Hall, and once more he was enveloped in crimson marble. He heard an accordion in the officers’ cabaret. It must be evening.

The officer led him back to the antechamber and opened an enormous door. Goebbels sat behind a desk, still propped up by books to look taller. He was exactly the way Lodenstein remembered him—a thin face with dark, heavy-lidded eyes—circles Elie once called bizarre, almost romantic eyes. The desk was piled with pamphlets, two copies of Mein Kampf, a tin of biscuits, a bottle of wine, a pitcher of water, and fluted glasses.

Goebbels waved away any mention of Hanussen and listened to Lodenstein talk about Stumpf’s visit to Heidegger. After he finished, Goebbels speculated whether he should kill Heidegger as well

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