Eva A Novel of the Holocaust by Meyer Levin

Author:Meyer Levin
Format: epub

On my second day in the Hermann Göring works, Slavek phoned me. Would I come and have lunch with him?

It had been so long! More than half a year.

“Why not?” I said. “But if you want to have lunch with me, come over here.”

As the plant covered a vast area, there were several restaurants for the workers. Slavek protested that in his shop the hours were strictly kept, and by the time he walked all the way to my side of the plant his bell would be ringing. In such an office as mine, and for a girl, he argued, things were more lenient.

But I said no; I had just got there and didn’t want to take liberties. “You come to me.”

“Then some other time,” he said, and hung up.

I was filled with desire to see him, and yet I couldn’t act differently. Perhaps I wanted things to be as they might have been at home. If a girl was courted by a bit of a scamp whom she was determined to tame, she could hold herself proud. Yet I missed him incessantly. My face had become thin, and I was uninterested in the life around me. Ever since I had broken with Slavek, Clava and Nina had been arranging dates for me, and a few times I had gone out, together with them. But none of the men had interested me, and lately I had been refusing to go out altogether.

Once more, Slavek called. Again we argued about which restaurant. Finally he said, rather angrily, “But, Katya, I simply can’t come to you!”

I thought of the past when he had found ways to come around, even in the middle of the morning, and I said, “If you want to have lunch with me, you’ll find a way to come here.” And I hung up. On so foolish a note, it ended.

On my lonely evenings, I would slip back to Bindermichel, and Nina would try to comfort me by singing a Russian love song.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, my little Katushinka,

Don’t cry, my pretty little love,

There’s so much in our lives that’s not the way we want it,

But still we know that when the springtime comes

There’ll be dancing again in our street!

So, let’s remember, Katushinka, that springtime has to come!

In the office I was making great progress. So much, in fact, that I even lost some of my dread of the Gestapo. For quite often in my new job I would be called to the downtown headquarters for translations.

I could now walk into that building without a sense of doom. The girl receptionist knew me. I would go upstairs to the Foreign Workers Section, to the office of the chief himself, Herr Müller. He was a man in his fifties, very neat, with the manner of a middle-ranking executive. There was certainly nothing frightening about him. His private office was good-sized and impressive, with leather chairs, a handsome desk—the office of a man of considerable consequence. And almost always, when I arrived, he would lean back as for a moment of relaxation.

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