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They talked a little about family. It was easy and seemed a natural thing to do. It kept them from thinking of why they were here, how they had met, and the danger all around them. Above all, it stopped them from remembering last night, and the young man whose name they were safer not knowing. They laughed at memories, and in sharing them suddenly realized how precious were family holidays, minor triumphs and disasters, jokes that were only funny because they had all laughed.
They passed Brownshirts in twos and threes, and they tried to look as if they barely noticed them. They spoke to no one else, except the occasional “good evening.” There were already a number of people gathered around the open space, paved in granite and covered with sand, where the books were to be burned. It was dark, and the buildings were huge shapes blocking the sky. People were almost indistinguishable.
Elena looked around as inconspicuously as she could. When the fire was lit, she would be able to see faces. It was still too early. But from what she could make out of clothes, angles of bodies, casual attitudes, most of them seemed to be young.
“Students,” she said quietly to Jacob. “Burning books? Are you sure?”
“Yes. They’re going to destroy the old world of ideas and create a new one.” He was staring straight ahead, and it was too dark for her to read his expression. He kept hold of her, his hand on her arm, as well as linked through hers.
Would this be a solemn occasion? Or a celebration, like the English remembrance of Guy Fawkes and the saving of Parliament from being blown up?
Who would bring all the books? Or would it really turn out to be only symbolic? Perhaps half a dozen books, or one edition of each book they disapproved of?
There was a growing tension in the air. Nervous laughter. The odd shout of something lost in the darkness.
Jacob looked around him uneasily. “I think this isn’t such a good idea…” he started.
She gripped his arm more tightly. “We’ve come this far…”
“I mean it. It could get nasty. Let’s go back.” He pulled her very slightly.
“No. Nothing’s happened yet. I want to see if it really does, or if it’s all just talk. I want pictures.”
“Of what? Burning papers and books?”
“No, of people, their faces, what it means to them,” she said quickly. “They’re symbolically getting rid of the past, with its good and bad; starting something again.”
He gripped her arm more tightly. “Elena, I mean it. It was a mistake to have come. We should leave before it gets nasty…”
“It’s not nasty, just stupid,” she argued, refusing to be pulled away.
He hesitated. “Well, if it turns ugly, you’ll come…”
“Yes, I will. I promise,” she agreed quickly, not looking at him but still watching the thickening crowd.
They did not have long to wait. The book-burners arrived in a cavalcade of cars and trucks laden with boxes and piles of loose books, and more thrown on top haphazardly.
In the car headlights, Elena saw several trucks with rostrums, each one hung with swastikas, with speakers to immortalize the event in words that would reach every newspaper by the morning. Who would it be? Hitler himself? Is that why there were so many people? And there were more now than even two or three minutes ago, more all the time, still coming.
Elena moved even closer to Jacob. The scene was vivid, like a nightmare in primary colors, almost obscene. Squads of students marched beside the slow-moving vehicles. There must have been hundreds of them, with more flooding in to join them. They waved banners and sang Nazi songs, full-throated, almost as if they had been hymns.
People beside Jacob and Elena surged forward, shouting as well, carrying them against their will. Jacob tightened his arm around her and she clung to him, buffeted and even bruised. He was right, this was growing nasty. She clung to her camera as well, adjusting the lens by feel, taking picture after picture, with little time to focus before it moved and was lost. She went through the whole roll of twenty-four, rewound the film into the canister, and threaded a new roll.
Many in the crowd wore caps of different colors—red, blue, green, purple—flashing brightly in the headlights for a moment, and then lost again. They were accompanied by a band of officers from the dueling corps wearing immaculate white breeches and blue tunics and looking absurd in the light of the flames. Their high boots had spurs on them! It was nothing like she had imagined, and yet there was undeniably an exhilaration about the event. Elena could not take her eyes away, except once or twice to steady her camera and make sure of the focus.
Someone tipped a pile of books onto the sand and immediately another person poured liquid over them and they caught fire in a quick, hungry blaze. Other people put more books on, and more. The pyre mounted until the glare of it lit more faces than she could count. There was no end to this. Thousands of people were gathered here, all around her, shouting, cheering, cursing the traitors to the nation who had written such filth, such blasphemy against the great German mind and soul.
It was an ecstasy of destruction. The power of it caught her up, the beauty and the brightness of the flames. She was barely aware of the rising heat. She found herself shaking, dry-mouthed, wanting to be part of it, swept up in spite of herself.
What was happening to her? This was madness! She continued to take pictures, although she wanted to wrap her arms tightly around herself, as if holding on, in case she should fragment into pieces.
The burning continued. The supply of books seemed endless. The flames never died down. They must have come from shops, libraries, schools, even private houses, perhaps handed down as treasures from the first printing. Some would be silk bound, some leather bound, many gold- or deckle-edged. They contained the beauty and ideas that had lit the minds of men and women for centuries, civilization’s communication from the past, across the present, and into the future, all burned to ashes.
Elena could not pull herself away from the destruction. A few yards distant from her, to her right, she saw people. She saw movement. She could not tell whether they were men or women, but she photographed them as they were capering almost like puppets being jerked by their strings. Their faces were pale, gibbering mouths misshapen as they gaped open, eyes in the reflected flames mere black holes in their heads, red-socketed. They were filled with an insane ecstasy as they watched the leather, parchment, and paper burn, the passion, intellect, and hope of generations destroyed in one single night.
A man let out a squeal of joy, his face bright with the lust for destruction. Another whirled around like a dervish, his pale coattails flying. She caught what could be a perfect picture of the movement, frenzied, hysterical. They seemed, in the red light, to be a distortion of humanity, not insane, but demonic.
They were young: students of thought and belief, of philosophy. How could they have come to this? Was the distance really so short, the divide between sanity and madness so fragile? Is there anything in the imagination so terrible as that which once had been beautiful and, even while you watched, had slipped beyond all reach into ugliness? She could see it through the viewfinder. But had she caught it?
