Leo counted his breaths, made sure there was a long calm pause before he said, “I didn’t knock it down. You did.”
Fritzie laughed, told Leo that their afternoon routine was just starting, and threw a large beaker at Leo’s feet, the shards spraying up to his eyes. Leo felt a small piece of glass tuck into the corner of his left eye, but he refused to close it, letting it sting until there were tears on his cheek.
“And that’s another one,” said Fritzie. “Two glass tubes broken, and all over the floor. Too bad there’s no broom to sweep it up,” he said. “And no dustpan. Just your little Jew hands.” Fritzie crunched his polished black school shoes on the glass, his toes smashing it nearly to dust. “Now if you can pick that all up and not get a single cut, then I’ll let you leave chemistry tomorrow without any broken glass to pick up.”
Without making a sound, or looking at Fritzie or Emi by the door, Leo got on his hands and knees and started gathering the tiny pieces of glass while Fritzie moved a few feet back, sat on a table, and watched him with amusement. He started swinging his big legs, hitting Leo’s back every few kicks with the tip of his leather shoe and reciting some edicts that Leo imagined he’d learned from pro-Nazi literature. Leo stayed unmoving against the blows, trying to keep his spine neutral, focused on cleaning up the glass as best he could.
He was reaching for the tiny dust that remained, the powder that he was pressing his sweaty fingers against to pick up, when he heard Emi breathing too loudly. Why was she still there? He grew anxious but didn’t look up. He knew not to.
Fritzie looked up immediately and Leo could practically hear him smile before he declared, “Jew boy! You have an audience. The Japanese girl!”
“What are you doing to Leo?” Leo heard Emi ask, her voice steady, not panicked. When Fritzie didn’t answer, Leo guessed that she wasn’t talking to him. She was addressing the school’s chemistry teacher, who was in the room with them, watching Leo. He was doing nothing, as usual, to stop Fritzie’s torture of him.
“It’s no concern of yours, Miss Kato,” the teacher said to Emi, while Leo only dared to look up to the teacher’s knees. “Go back to the girls’ side, right now.” The next thing Leo heard was Emi’s feet taking off down the hall. A minute later, after her footsteps were out of earshot, he heard a much better noise. She had started to play the piano. Loudly, angrily. Hard enough to break the strings.
It wasn’t until a month later that Leo brought up the incident. It was the end of November, and they had plans to go to the Prater amusement park in Vienna’s second district before the weather turned too cold. As they walked to the park, arm in arm, Leo pulled her back a little, motioning for her to slow down. He wanted the afternoon to feel long and easy.
Leo had liked Emi from the first moment she pointed out that he was staring at her as if she were a cat playing Chopin. Most of the girls he knew would not dare say such a thing, even if his tongue was on the floor. But he’d learned quickly that Emi said whatever was on her mind, and it was usually something intelligent and a little daring. He liked that she was confident, and talented, yet very self-contained. He had written it off as a Japanese trait at first, but he soon concluded that it was more of an attribute particular to Emi. It was apparent from the first week they spent together that she didn’t need him, or the world, saluting her as he imagined many young women would have liked. She seemed to move through life as her only critic, her opinion of herself, and her expectations, the ones that mattered most of all. But she had assured him that she did need him, and that made him like her even more. Of all the students at their school, many who wanted to be close to her, she had picked him.
They waited in line for the Ferris wheel and when it came, Leo took Emi by the hand, his bare fingers sticking to her leather glove, and helped her climb into the little, swinging compartment. When they were almost at the top, he leaned over and kissed her softly, knowing he couldn’t avoid the subject of the chemistry room any longer.
“Thank you for playing the piano that day,” he said when his lips lifted from hers. “I think I could endure anything if you provided the music.”
“Leo, I didn’t know what to do,” she said, starting to cry. “I should have marched into the room and stayed there until they let you stop.”
“You can’t cry after I’ve kissed you,” said Leo, wiping her tears with his index finger. “Please don’t. I can handle a lot. It isn’t my school, or my city anymore, but it will be again one day. I just have to be patient and wait.”
“Until then you will pick up broken glass with your hands while that malicious Fritzie Dorn kicks you and the teacher looks on gleefully?”
“Yes,” Leo replied. “And probably worse. But I don’t care about any of that, especially not now.”
“What do you care about?” Emi asked, her voice anxious. “Because I couldn’t do it. I could not just get on my hands and knees and pick up glass while being kicked by Fritzie.”
“It’s surprising what a person can endure,” said Leo, pointing out the view of the city. “My parents are happy that I’m still in the school, and while some of the things that happen to me are unpleasant, I’m not in any real danger.”
“Aren’t you?” asked Emi. “Because I saw Fritzie’s face. He looked ready to kill you. And he’s in the Hitlerjugend. You’ve seen the boys wearing the pins around school. There are more and more of them.”
“This is still Austria, not Germany,” said Leo. “We don’t have to live in fear of actually being killed.”
“But for how much longer?” said Emi, reaching for Leo’s arm. “It’s not a secret that Hitler wants Austria. He is desperate to fold it into the Third Reich. And then what? All his policies against the Jews will become law here. Your father won’t be able to work. You won’t be at school. You listen to the radio and read the newspapers, Froschi. Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
“Of course I know,” said Leo, leaning against the cold metal wall of the Ferris wheel compartment. He thought about an article he had seen that morning about the further implementation of Aryanization laws in Germany. If the Hartmanns were there rather than in Vienna, their factory would not be in their hands anymore and his father would have been dismissed from his job at the bank. Generations of work would have been sold to a non-Jew for a song. “I know, but Hitler isn’t in Austria. Our government still wants to keep him out. So I’m focused on that. And more importantly, I’m focused on you.”
“I need to be more like you,” said Emi, her face still contorted with worry.