When he was pushed out by the rest of his family, the relief struggled inside him like an obscenity. It was something he didn’t want to feel, but nonetheless, he felt it with such gusto it made him want to throw up. How could he? How could he?
But he did.
“Bring nothing,” Walter told him. “Just what you’re wearing. I’ll give you the rest.”
“Max.” It was his mother.
From a drawer, she took an old piece of paper and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. “If ever …” She held him one last time, by the elbows. “This could be your last hope.”
He looked into her aging face and kissed her, very hard, on the lips.
“Come on.” Walter pulled at him as the rest of the family said their goodbyes and gave him money and a few valuables. “It’s chaos out there, and chaos is what we need.”
They left, without looking back.
It tortured him.
If only he’d turned for one last look at his family as he left the apartment. Perhaps then the guilt would not have been so heavy. No final goodbye.
No final grip of the eyes.
Nothing but goneness.
For the next two years, he remained in hiding, in an empty storeroom. It was in a building where Walter had worked in previous years. There was very little food. There was plenty of suspicion. The remaining Jews with money in the neighborhood were emigrating. The Jews without money were also trying, but without much success. Max’s family fell into the latter category. Walter checked on them occasionally, as inconspicuously as he could. One afternoon, when he visited, someone else opened the door.
When Max heard the news, his body felt like it was being screwed up into a ball, like a page littered with mistakes. Like garbage.
Yet each day, he managed to unravel and straighten himself, disgusted and thankful. Wrecked, but somehow not torn into pieces.
Halfway through 1939, just over six months into the period of hiding, they decided that a new course of action needed to be taken. They examined the piece of paper Max was handed upon his desertion. That’s right—his desertion, not only his escape. That was how he viewed it, amid the grotesquerie of his relief. We already know what was written on that piece of paper:
ONE NAME, ONE ADDRESS
Hans Hubermann
Himmel Street 33, Molching
“It’s getting worse,” Walter told Max. “Anytime now, they could find us out.” There was much hunching in the dark. “We don’t know what might happen. I might get caught. You might need to find that place …. I’m too scared to ask anyone for help here. They might put me in.” There was only one solution. “I’ll go down there and find this man. If he’s turned into a Nazi—which is very likely—I’ll just turn around. At least we know then, richtig?”
Max gave him every last pfennig to make the trip, and a few days later, when Walter returned, they embraced before he held his breath. “And?”
Walter nodded. “He’s good. He still plays that accordion your mother told you about—your father’s. He’s not a member of the party. He gave me money.” At this stage, Hans Hubermann was only a list. “He’s fairly poor, he’s married, and there’s a kid.”
This sparked Max’s attention even further. “How old?”
“Ten. You can’t have everything.”
“Yes. Kids have big mouths.”
“We’re lucky as it is.”
They sat in silence awhile. It was Max who disturbed it.
“He must already hate me, huh?”
“I don’t think so. He gave me the money, didn’t he? He said a promise is a promise.”
A week later, a letter came. Hans notified Walter Kugler that he would try to send things to help whenever he could. There was a one-page map of Molching and Greater Munich, as well as a direct route from Pasing (the more reliable train station) to his front door. In his letter, the last words were obvious.