I Sleep in Hitler's Room by Tuvia Tenenbom Read Free Book Online

other incurable disease walking on two.
    Are you proud to be German?
    No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, come the answers. Not one yes.
    I get into a conversation with a young woman who is married to a man who could be her grandpa. He used to be her professor, she tells me. Must be a great thinker to make her fall in love with him. I chat with the man. Are you proud to be German? I ask him. “No, of course not,” he says. We talk a little bit more. He has a few glasses of beer, I have a few Cola Lights, which is what they call Diet Coke here. And then I whisper in his ear: “You are in a dark room, all by yourself, naked. It’s a wonderful evening. An angel drops from heaven to serve you. And he asks you, the angel, ‘Are you proud to be German?’ What’s your answer?”
    “Yes, I am!” The Professor says loudly.
    No wonder this attractive young lady fell in love with this ancient thinker.
    Who are the Germans? No clue.
    Is there something “German” beyond just passport and some internationally recognized borders? Oh, Yes. Just do me a favor, please, and don’t ask me to tell you what it is. I really don’t know. The only thing I can tell you is this: I’m busy. Very busy. I’m trying to find somebody who’ll tell me that he or she is proud to be German. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I find those people, kiss them or slap them, but I think it’ll be good for my sanity.
    A day later I meet Mathias. He’s Proud to be East German, he says, but can’t say Proud to be German. No way. West Germans, he tells me, drink much less alcohol than the eastern ones. I try to process it. What does he mean “less”? What happens in the east, heaven help me? They bathe in rivers made of beer? While enjoying his beer, he and his girlfriend, Evelyn, share with me their thoughts about the characteristics of the German: “Seriousness, order, unfriendliness, cleanliness.” “That’s why,” they explain to me, “the radical left is dirty . . . a protest against the ‘German.’ ”
    I need to get myself a smart person, a human creature with a clear head, to get me out of the mess I find myself in. Or I’m leaving this country on the next flight out. Ash cloud or not. I’ll pay Lufthansa $9,800 to fly me to Iceland. I don’t care.
    I settle for the oldest surviving German chancellor, His Honor Mr. Helmut Schmidt. The man is an icon in this country, I’m told. Works for me. It will take an icon to get me back on track.
    I just open my mouth, and the Icon comments to me:
    “Let me make a technical remark: I am ninety-one years old, my ears are already a hundred and one years. I understand one half of what you say. The other half I have to make up in my little computer up here, and it’s neither from Apple nor from HP, it’s from God and therefore it’s working slowly. You’re speaking much too quickly for me. Please speak slowly.”
    Very slowly, as slowly as I can, I enunciate my first question to him:
    Former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing said at the time that your father’s father was Jewish. Is that correct?
    Hell knows why this is the first question I pose to him. As if this were my business. Or, as if I really care. But you can’t stop a tongue once it starts.
    The response?
    “Yes.”
    And I go on, like a classical idiot:
    You never said it to anybody before. Why?
    “There was no reason to talk about it.”
    Well, you might call Mr. Schmidt an icon. But to me, don’t laugh, he’s a Jew. Certified. This interview, strange as it might sound to your ears, is going to be a conversation between two Jews. Two Jews talking.
    And the First Jew, yours truly, asks the Second Jew, your icon:
    Is there a national characteristic that makes a German German?
    Second Jew thinks. It takes the Jew time to answer. After two thousand years of Exile, Jews learned to be patient. So I wait until my fellow Jew comes up with an answer. Sure as the Exile, he finally does:
    “You could write a whole book