Heritage Read Free Page A

proud of himself and pleased by her reaction.
    Upon Ruth’s instruction, Mannie rejoined Samuel and Rachel in the living room and, through the open archway, Ruth watched the men play with the child as she stacked the supplies into the cupboard and cut up the bread. Chalk and cheese, the two of them, she thought, but such a bond they shared. They’d both spoken to her a great deal about their childhood. Samuel was always the one who got them into trouble, they said, and Mannie was always the one who got them out of it.
    â€˜Son of a diplomat,’ Samuel would say. ‘It obviously rubbed off.’
    Ruth had never met Stefan Brandauer but she’d seen his picture many times in the newspapers. Stefan Brandauer had been a prominent member of Berlin society, and Mannie looked just like his father. Tall, fine-boned, elegantly handsome, his hair always groomed. A tidy man. The antithesis of Samuel. She smiled as she watched Samuel piggy-backing Rachel around the living room. Nuggetty, athletic, his dark curly hair refusing to be tamed – not that he’d care to try anyway – Samuel was an unruly man in every way.
    But the differences between them had always meant nothing. Just as being Gentile and Jew had had no influence upon their friendship. It never had. They’d been children of Berlin, they both maintained. ‘True Berliners, and proud of it,’ Samuel always said. That’s why it had been such a shock when he’d been dismissed from university before he’d completed his degree.
    â€˜They say I’m not a German,’ he’d told her, hurt and bewildered. ‘They say that I’m a Jew. What’s wrong with being both? I’m a German who happens to be a Jew.’
    Samuel had never thought of his Jewish heritage in terms of race. His upbringing had been unorthodox, and Ruth remembered, when she’d first met him, being faintly shocked to discover he ate ham with gusto, jokingly calling it smoked salmon. His father had been a professor of physics at the University of Berlin, an intellectual and, like Stefan Brandauer, a staunch patron of the arts. Leonard Lachmann and Stefan Brandauer had become firm friends, and it was in the Brandauer house at Tiergartenstrasse that the lifelong friendship of their sons had been forged. Leonard had lost his position at the university around the same time as Stefan had been posted to London. ‘A sign of the times,’ Stefan had wryly remarked, then more seriously he’d added, ‘We’d best pray for our sons.’ Shortly after Stefan’s departure, Leonard Lachmann, too, had left Berlin, having accepted a post at Zurich University.
    â€˜So there we were,’ Samuel had told Ruth when he and Mannie had given her their potted history, ‘thrown out into the storm, left to fend for ourselves, two lonely orphans.’
    â€˜Two lonely orphans whose fathers paid for their education, set them up in a flat, and forwarded regular allowances,’ Mannie had corrected him.
    â€˜It sounded better my way. Don’t listen to him, Ruth. He never lets me get away with anything.’ Samuel had cast a caustic look at his friend. ‘What on earth would I do without you, Mannie?’
    What indeed? Ruth thought as she spooned the soup into the bowls.
    They ate at the kitchen table, Ruth helping Rachel messily devour her soup and Mannie staring thoughtfully through the gauze curtains at the Meisells’ ground-floor apartment opposite. Their curtains were also drawn, but the light within was clearly visible. He prayed that the Meisells would get out safely. Just as he prayed that Samuel would heed his advice, and in his mind he rehearsed his ‘lecture’.
    When they’d finished dining, Ruth stacked the bowls and cutlery, preparing to leave the men alone for their talk.
    â€˜Read story, Mannie, read story.’
    Ruth shared a smile with Mannie. He had always been Rachel’s favourite