Esther Fallen But A King Saved

I am not dead, I remind myself upon waking for at least the hundredth time since he came into my life, since he came into all our lives. The damp sweat coating every inch of my body is not blood gushing out of a wound but simply a sign that I’m still alive.

“This is a good thing,” I whisper then scoff because even I do not believe the lies he has manufactured.

Two years and twenty days have passed since Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, two years and twenty days since I have felt safe in my own skin. Now, I feel as if I am the dead walking, constantly reminding myself that I’m not, yet it feels so real when his hands wrap around my throat in my dreams and squeeze.

It feels so real when his soldiers break into our homes and take away our rights. It feels so real because it is, but at least I am not dead, I remind myself.

Not yet.

As if I am a fugitive, I slink into the shadows, hastily dressing in a burgundy skirt and white blouse. Running my fingers down the dark, red fabric—I am not dead. Those words sink in and before I know it I am painting my lips red and my cheeks with a fine blush. In my small bathroom mirror, I see a defiant woman who I’ve never met before. She smiles, and my lips curve upward. This world isn’t free of me yet.

In familiar movements, I slide down from my second-floor window to the sharp, ivy-covered trellis that leaves me with painful cuts, but it’s the price I must pay to avoid seeing my mother’s too relieved gaze whenever she sees my face now and not in the clutches of his concentration camps.

I’m not dead, I remind myself—again. At this point, I should embroider it on a throw pillow with how many times I have said those words. I chuckle at my own absurdity just as a homeless German man snarls, “Witch,” in such a fierce tone that I clutch my purse and walk faster along the streets of Frankfurt to my father’s tailor shop.

It is a cloudy, dreary day and I feel deep in my bones how the storm clouds gather as if they know darkness is coming. With my head high in the clouds, I don’t see the path or the stores, so when a young man grabs my arm and shoves me into an alley, I’m completely unprepared.

He pushes me against a brick wall of one of the many bustling stores in Frankfurt, though it’s strangely quiet now in the moment of my terror.

“Who are you?” I hiss, my German slurred with fear and anger.

“It is just me, my love,” the man says, amused but stepping back at my hissed words, enough for me to make out Otto’s face in the dim light.

“Oy vey, you scared the daylights out of me,” I exclaim to the one I wish dead in this moment, just as I’ve reminded myself in the past two years and twenty days that I’m not.

However, Otto’s dark, knowing eyes see past my fear and anger right into my battered heart. His amused smile falters and his smooth hands which I’ve always loved, come to caress my cheek. Before I know it, I’m smiling at the man I love and who loves me.

“How was it today?” my German lover whispers softly, bright relief flashing in his eyes as he traces my smile, reminding me so much of my mother that I can’t help but respond honestly.

“I am not dead,” I whisper, and tears rise to my eyes. Otto, who knows my soul, brushes them away in this dark Frankfurt alley that, in this moment, becomes my sanctuary.

“You will never be, Esther, not if I can help it.”

Otto declares, as if by saying these words he will make the monsters who crave my death run away in fear, and those who don’t, I know he would kill by the determination in his voice.

His words bruise my battered heart because I know how true they are and the lengths he might go for me, for the girl who tailored his suit and then sewed his heart to mine.

All I can do is show him the liveliness in my bones and the death that must be far, far away from me else the world might collapse, and Otto would be at the helm.

So, I do the one thing we vowed never to do in public: I embrace the man I love. I embrace the German I love.

Otto melts under my touch, wrapping his arms around my waist and I cherish this moment, one of the only in these past two years and twenty days where I don’t feel dead; in fact, I feel the most alive I have felt in a long, long time.

I pull away first because I know if I stayed any longer I might wrap myself around him and never let go. Giggling, I twirl my finger affectionately through his blond curls and in that moment I know I have him on his knees.

Otto’s eyes are on me, my fingers in his hair. I knew then and there that he would die for me. The realization is frightening, so much so that I say in that moment—the moment that I would give anything to go back to now—that I will be late to my father’s tailor shop if I do not leave now.

Otto reluctantly relinquishes his grasp, and with an incredibly intimate kiss on my hand and another declaration of his love—he releases his lover back onto the streets with a realization that could kill them both.

The one thing that Otto didn’t mention in his declaration of love was the name of the monster who craved my death, the one that he would die himself to kill.

Adolf Hitler.

The chancellor of Germany who despised me and all my people in his country and throughout the whole world. What Otto didn’t mention was who I am and what my name gives away the moment he breathed it.

I am a Jew.

My family are Jews.

Adolf Hitler kills Jews.

The realization reverberates across my bones and sinks into my skin. I grow weary, my eyes casting upward to the sky, no longer dreary but shining bright. That is the only thing that gives me strength in the moment to pray for Otto and for his love for me to completely vanish just as my people’s culture and rights have under Hitler’s tyrannical rule.

It is the only way, I tell myself.

It is the only way for him to survive because I know he would die for me and worst of all I knew he would love me through anything.

I will not, if I can help it, have my love die for me just so that he can love me.

So, as Xerxes lowered his gold scepter and accepted Esther, Adonai grants her namesake wisdom and gives me an idea that will save my love but surely kill me.

Without another thought, I grab my things, spit on the spot where I have lost my love, and flee so as to commence it.

Three days later on a beautiful, starry night in Frankfurt, the wealthy German nobles gather in the mayor’s gardens to celebrate their chancellor and scorn his enemies—the Jews.

One wouldn’t think that I in my right mind would be anywhere near these nobles, let alone climbing their garden trellis up the side of the mayor’s house, but I lost my mind the moment I decided to lose my love, and this is the consequence.

The consequence unfortunately being finding the one place where Otto's mother and father would be and consequently him—the one place where my love's race ruthlessly scorns mine.

Ungracefully, unlike my namesake, I swing my body from the trellis onto the cold, hard, cement of the balcony, closer than I thought it would be. It takes everything in me to hold in the Yiddish curse that would scald my mother’s ear but not the groan of pain that leaves my mouth. I sway as I try to stand, and immediately the balcony door flies open, and I fall into familiar, comforting arms.

“Otto, my love,” I whisper gently, my self-control gone, as if those words were lifted to Adonai himself, so reverent they were.

In that moment, I relish the love and compassion he shows me because soon it will be his last if I have anything to say about it and the letter in my pocket starts to burn.

I wince as he lays me on the golden chaise in the beautifully decorated room, a warmth and comfort I dare not sink into.

Then, suddenly, my love asks the one question I wish he wouldn’t but knew that he would.

“Why would you climb up the mayor’s trellis and why would you invite me into this room with a letter—why are you being so cryptic, Esther?”

Otto’s confused eyes helplessly search mine as he caresses my cut cheek, and I wince again, and it’s as if he feels my pain in his love for me so that he winces too.

It takes all the strength of my namesake for me to meet my love’s eyes and peel his hands away from my face as I then say the five words I would give anything not to speak—that kill me as surely as it saves him.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

The words pass agonizingly through my lips, burning almost as much as my bruises and the letter scalding my side, the letter I now pull from my pockets.

“What is that?” Otto asks, apprehension and suspicion coating every word. His dark eyes are shrewd as he sees the letter addressed to him in my handwriting, the letter which are words that I cannot bear to say to him now, words that would break me if I really had to.

“Any letter you think you need to give me can be said right here and now.”

My love declares with his words shaking, though he doesn’t even mention my death craved by monsters or the heritage of my people that I carry on my skin and in my name.

“You know,” I whisper painfully, my eyes glancing downward to my hands, now clasped in tight fists because if they weren't then I would surely fall into my love’s arms again.

Tears fall onto my fists, and I feel them before I see them, as I feel the harsh curse Otto gives before I even hear it, and he stands from the golden chaise and turns to me.

His hands gesture wildly and are shaking as he shouts everything resulting from the words I left unsaid, the words that I know now sink and bruise his heart even more.

“I love you, Esther, does that mean nothing to you? Does that not conquer everything for us?”

My lover’s words are hopelessly optimistic and would be beautiful if there were no monsters in this world and if only light existed.

But, it is not Heaven, and my Adonai allows suffering in this life which is what I tell Otto as I rise from the chaise and speak scathing words.

“Oh my love, do not be so naïve. It is not enough and you know it. Do you think you can beat Adolf Hitler, the chancellor of Germany and persecutor of my people?”

The words hit him as if I had smacked him myself—his eyes widen, his face reddens, and his chest rises and falls rapidly. Otto grasps my hands as if their contact is the only thing keeping him from succumbing to the wounds I inflicted, but he doesn’t give up.

Of course, he doesn’t, his love is too strong and his following words bruise me far more than the balcony and even Hitler himself ever could.

“Esther, my love, I can protect you—I can protect us for as long as we both shall live. Esther, will—.”

I interrupt him before he can even finish that sentence for if he did no amount of self-control would stop me from saying yes a million times over.

“No, do not say the words I know you are about to. My love, I will not condemn you to an existence of pain and fear, wondering every day if this is the day that you will die. I can and will not place that burden onto you when it is my heritage they hate and yours that they love.”

Otto pulls away from my grasp in a way he has never done before and his dark, loving eyes fracture—it has begun.

I know it has begun because my heart feels as if it has been ripped out of my chest and he turns to sit on the golden chaise with a shuddering and watery sigh.

“But, I love you Esther—doesn’t that mean something, doesn’t that mean everything to you?”

The man whom I love and who knows my soul whispers this helplessly as he gazes up at me, and in that moment, with his golden hair ruffled, his dark eyes vulnerable, and his lips trembling—he has never looked more beautiful or more devasting.

Then, because he can’t help to see the love I know lays in my face, Otto buries his own in his hands. The resounding shudder from his lips breaks my heart into a million pieces, and Hitler himself should take notes on this torture and agony, the death that has taken place tonight of a once loving Jewish girl.

Gushing, silent tears fall from my eyes, and I do not wipe them away as I pull my love’s hands from his face. The words I whisper to him then are the only words I have left, the only explanation to this pain that has made me dizzy and that has surely killed me, my soul, and most certainly my heart.

“Otto, it is because of my love for you that I am doing this.”

A cry rushes from my lips and I turn away from him as my whole body shakes at what I have done to us, at what I have killed surely as if Hitler had murdered us himself.

In sheer devastation, Otto grasps my chin in his hand and pulls my body towards him so that his words, his eyes, and his hope are all that I can see.

“Then is it because of your love that I shall despise this world forevermore. Esther, do you not want me to have hope and to have happiness which you know I cannot have without you?”

Otto’s hands clasp my own in one final declaration of love for me and for our future. Our future which is, I know deep in my Jewish bones, hopeless and a love that I have already killed, that is dead as surely as my heart is now.

My whole body starts to deteriorate as if I am already a corpse at the sight of a single tear running down Otto’s face. The words that escape me are as hard to do as they are to pull his hands away from mine and place a letter in them instead.

“My love, it does not matter if you are happy—you will be alive and that is all that matters.”

Otto grasps the letter roughly, and it crinkles under his rage, his sorrow, and his devastation at a future I have destroyed and a hope that dies now in his eyes as my heart now dies in his hands.

Before I can stop him, Otto wraps his hand around the nape of my neck and kisses me chastely in a way that scalds my cheeks and wakens my deadened heart.

I am not dead; I remind myself as he kisses me in the abandoned and luxurious room of the mayor’s house.

This time he is the one to pull away first and the words he whispers onto my lips never leave me until the day that I die.

With some sense left in him, Otto pockets my letter in his suit jacket that I realized I tailored myself, and more tears leak from my eyes.

He rises from the chaise slowly as if it is painful to do so and painful still to walk away from me.

I understand that pain well, I feel it in my very bones now because now I know what it is to be dead and what it is to lose the love that had brought me back to life.

The look he gives me before he leaves the room and the door slowly closes behind him is one that I never forget —it is a look of utter devastation that I always assumed I would never see.

It is a look Jewish widows have when they learn their husbands have died from Hitler’s propaganda and tyranny. It is a look I am sure Juliet gave to Romeo’s rotting corpse before she stuck the dagger in her own heart.

The dagger embeds itself in my heart now and goes even deeper at the words he said on my lips after he kissed me—the words that will never leave me until the day I die.

These are the only words that keep me alive when Hitler finds me and the concentration camps become my prison two years later.

These words are the words that I hear ringing in my ears before the toxic gas comes and death finally becomes me—the love leaves my soul but his words never do.

“Esther: my Queen, I will always love you.”