Offerings by Richard Smolev Page A

They eventually were directed to a room behind a drab gray door on the even more institutional and dank third floor east corridor. Three of the four fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling were dark. The linoleum squares whose edges had curled were too numerous to count.
    A man greeted them. “Could you tell me, please, the nature of your inquiry?” The clerk was tall, wafer-thin, with a narrow face and an aquiline nose. He was dressed in a white shirt and black tie. He carried himself stiffly. Despite the air of pomp, his fingernails and the ridges on the tips of his fingers were coated with grease, as though he’d spent the morning working on a car. His clothes smelled of kerosene.
    “Although I am advised you came from America for the sole purpose of visiting this office, I do not understand why you are seeking records for a family of which you do not appear to be a part.” He looked at Kate as though she were a thief.
    “Brewster is my married name.”
    “Do you have evidence I may examine that your maiden name was Hirsch?” The man continued when Kate said nothing. “We have privacy concerns to consider.”
    Her bluff would take Kate only so far. She was holding no cards if he called her bluff.
    “I have information about a valuable piece of art that may belong to the Hirsch family. I am trying to find someone with whom I can make contact, which is why we’re seeking birth records. It’s a form of genealogical research, but with the purpose and intent of returning goods that may have been taken from this family.” She asked Nina to translate so there could be no question the clerk understood the supposed nobility of their purpose, but every word of the lie filled her mouth with sand.
    “Our records are incomplete.” The man plainly intended to cut the conversation short. “They will not be helpful to your effort.”
    “Whatever data you have will be most useful, I’m sure.” Nina sensed Kate was at sea. She spoke without being prodded.
    But Nina’s effort got them nowhere. The clerk left both women at the counter. He disappeared into an office to their left. The door shut.
    “He’s not going to help us,” Kate and Nina said almost together, but with little choice but to play out the hand they’d been dealt; they sat on a bench near the door. Nina took a James Salter novel out of her purse. Kate bent her head and closed her eyes. She was too exhausted and too unwilling to catalog the foolish choices she’d made to end up in this position. But matching that was the absurdity of having come all this way only to be shut out by some petty bureaucrat.
    Nina began to hum while she read.
    It was hard to tell whether a minute passed, or an hour. The hallway seemed to spin at first and then all was calm.
    Another clerk, a woman who identified herself as Ingrid, and who seemed a little older than Kate, approached them. She asked in German if they needed anything. Nina told her they were waiting for the clerk to come out of his office. Ingrid said she had overhead their conversation and understood what they were looking for.
    She spoke directly to Nina, who translated for Kate. “I appreciate what you are going through. Every now and then someone will come here, looking for information about a relative. It’s always the same. No one ever helps. I wish I could do something for you, but I am powerless. My job is to move paper from one pile to another, nothing more.”
    Nina asked if there were any other sources of information. Ingrid said it would be of no use to check with the postal authorities. “For years after the war, my mother worked as a postal clerk. Her job was to dispose of mail addressed to families which had fled of their own accord or had been taken away. The letters were from relatives desperate for any small bit of information. Many had been sent years before the family left Linz. My mother always said the letters were like the light from a distant galaxy.”
    The woman waited before speaking. When