Holocaust fiction and memoirs seem to have an enduring appeal. Novels like Suite Francaise, Lilac Girls, and The Tattooist of Auschwitz are easy finds atop bestseller lists and in bookstores. Leah Janeczko’s translation of Rosella Postorino’s At the Wolf’s Table fits well within this genre. Postorino’s first work to be translated into English is a flawed but compelling take on an easily overlooked aspect of the war.
Similar to The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Wolf’s Table is based on the life of a Nazi-era eyewitness, but from an unusual point of view; Margot Wölk is a food taster for Hitler at his Wolf’s Lair military compound. During a time of paranoia about assassination attempts by poison, Wölk was subject to SS security and control. Since all other food tasters died during the war, her role only came to light after she broke her silence at age 95. Clearly, this premise carries troubling ethical implications, which At the Wolf’s Table only partially explores. Within this odd atmosphere, the relationships between the female food tasters emerge as the strongest force, while a morally ambiguous love line falters, ultimately shortchanging the complexities of life in the Third Reich.
From the first page, Wolf’s Table throws the reader into a twisted fairy tale. The text refers to Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf at the door, but it’s also Goldilocks and the Three Bears recast as modernized horror. Starving women behold a welcoming feast: “The string beans were served with melted butter…The aroma of the roasted peppers tickled my nose.” The porridge may be just right, but the bears are never far away. In such a strange environment, Rosa Sauer (the protagonist and stand-in for Wölk) distinguishes herself from the pro-Nazi Fanatics, seeking out women equally ambivalent about this task. She finds a kindred spirit in fellow food taster Elfriede Kuhn, a gadfly at once contemptuous and tender.
Rosa and Elfriede’s friendship is powerful and convincing, forming a core that the novel might otherwise lack. Despite a problematic marriage, Rosa is horrified when her husband, Gregor, is declared missing in action. Elfriede picks up on her extreme distress, needling her about her “’bomb-shelter’ hairdo” and “stubbornhead” attitude. After this spat erupts into physical violence, we learn that it’s an aggressive catharsis. Elfriede asks if she feels better now, with Rosa reflecting: “She embraced me in a hug. She had never done that. I clung to her body for sharp edges. It wasn’t waiting for anyone, that body; it could offer refuge to mine.” The stormy connection helps the two women navigate the conflation of domesticity—food, cooking, female companionship—with an increasingly hostile war zone.
A romantic subplot disrupts this appealing solidarity, revealing unfortunate weaknesses in pacing and character development. With her husband missing and possibly dead, Rosa begins a torrid affair with one of her enforcers at Wolf’s Lair, Lieutenant Ziegler. She runs into him at a local noblewoman’s party. He initiates their rendezvous by standing outside her window in the middle of the night. While intriguing, Ziegler’s character and motivations feel incompletely sketched, rendering him a virtual specter alongside the larger-than-life Elfriede. When a food poisoning mishap causes Rosa and several of the women to become ill, Ziegler is an icy and unsympathetic figure. When Rosa observes that his “indifference” to her terror is “humiliating,” he slips into a familiar Holocaust role: the terrifying professional who follows orders and prioritizes duty over ethics. Yet his rage when she tries to end their liaison—he threatens to “break [her] window” if she refuses to meet him again—doesn’t quite fit with the backstage role she seems to occupy in his life. Gaps in the love line are compounded by the novel’s rushed plot in its final pages, which blaze through the end of the war, Rosa’s fractured reunion with her husband, and major time jumps.
Despite its shortcomings, At the Wolf’s Table is a promising addition to the Holocaust fiction bookshelf, if only for the touching and unusual friendship it chronicles.
Rosella Postorino, At the Wolf’s Table, trans. Leah Janeczko (Flatiron Books, 2019)
Photo credit: Engin_Akyurt via Pixabay.
