Free Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel by Thaisa Frank

looked in the other direction to hide his disappointment. Then he asked:

    How old is this girl?

    Almost sixteen. Why?

    Because she’d need to walk through the town and act calm, said Stumpf. Can she act calm?

    Of course she can act calm. How else could she spend five months in a crawl space?

    Stumpf spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness—invisible in the dark. He touched Mikhail’s shoulder by accident, jerked away, and said he didn’t know what to do. Goebbels’s orders were to deliver the glasses to Heidegger with a convincing answer to the letter. But Stumpf couldn’t write an answer himself.

    I’m a practical man, he said again.

    A dilemma, said Mikhail.

    A paradox, said Stumpf.

    They made the laborious climb out of the air vent, and Stumpf told Mikhail he would give the matter some thought. He crept past the kitchen to his shoebox of a watchtower and looked down at the Scribes, who were huddled on desks and wrestling with covers to keep warm. It occurred to him they looked like boa constrictors. Someone cried out in sleep. Someone else said to shut up. Then there was a chorus of shut ups and an upwelling of whispering.

    Stumpf pounded on the window and shouted, Order!— a command that made another Scribe shout:

    Be quiet! We’re trying to sleep!

    Stumpf watched with contempt while Scribes rearranged more blankets, and papers scattered to the floor. He considered offering all five philosophers a ham and an extra supply of cigarettes in return for writing the letter. But a conspicuous bribe could lead to gossip, and gossip could lead to chaos, and there was already enough chaos in the Compound.

    Just last week someone had scrawled Dreamatorium over the main door. Stumpf had washed it off, but it was scrawled back the next day. He considered going downstairs to wash it off again. But within moments he was asleep in his chair, his head against the glass of the watchtower.

    Every afternoon between one and one-thirty it was Stumpf’s job to order the Scribes to imagine Joseph Goebbels, the head of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. This was to prepare for Goebbels’s visit to the Compound—an event that was continually announced and postponed. The reason for the imagining, as explained to Stumpf, was so no one would be in awe of him when he did arrive and could answer his questions. Gerhardt Lodenstein allowed Stumpf to carry out the exercise so he could feel useful—an illusion that spared the Scribes from excessive rants.

    For the duration of the exercise, Scribes had to push their typewriters to the edge of the desks and put away pens and letters. Then they had to imagine Goebbels in the proper sequence, starting with his boots, on to his jodhpurs, and then to his face. There was never any mention of his clubfoot. And whoever didn’t imagine in the right order would be punished.

    Stumpf walked back and forth between desks, sorry he couldn’t make the Scribes imagine Heinrich Himmler instead and confused about how to regulate something he couldn’t see. He stared at Scribes who were trying not to laugh and gave commands:

    Imagine more quickly!

    Continue imagining!

    Proceed in the proper order!

    Nafissian was smirking. Stumpf walked to his desk and asked what he was imagining.

    Goebbels’s boots, said Nafissian.

    What do they look like?

    Black.

    Are they shiny?

    Yes.

    Wrong. We don’t know what kind of day Goebbels will have had when he visits. He could have been walking through mud. Or have a bunion and be wearing slippers.

    Be prepared for anything, he continued. Goebbels could be wearing a hairnet. But you won’t be looking that high.

    Or a housedress, said La Toya.

    Shut up! said Stumpf.

    The Scribes pursed their lips to keep from laughing. They never tried to imagine Goebbels. Instead they thought about a decent cup of coffee, or whom they’d try to seduce that night if they won the lottery for Elie’s old room. They tried not to think about what