A Perfect Madness (33 page)

Cremation troubled Erich deeply,
though. The idea of death and burial and rising when the given day
came, was as real to him as the breaths he took. And the burying of
ashes was not the same as a whole body, which God expected to see.
He had come by this belief from his grandfather, who told him God
didn’t have time to run around trying to put together thousands of
pieces of burnt bones and flesh in order to have a man ready for
Judgment Day. And ever since those words, Erich believed that only
a wholeness of one’s body would get you into heaven. He had tried
to discuss it with Julia several times but got nowhere because she
always thought he was preaching to her, trying to scare and convert
her. How she would look before God was as insignificant to her as a
single blade of grass. So her answer to him was always the same:
“Remember the closing lines of Psalm Twenty-Three, Erich. That is
all I will ever need to know about dying: ‘that I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever.’ ”

***

TWENTY-THREE

Julia, Czechoslovakia, 1942

“W
e are filthy and
smell no better than the old man’s outhouse,” Julia said, stepping
around a pile of garbage dumped recently from one of the passing
trains.

“
Yes, but I’ll bet that
old bastard and his two soldier friends smell a hell of a lot worse
where they are, lying in all that crap,” Eva said,
laughing.

Since turning southeast towards
Klatovy they had covered six miles, hiking steadily along the
snow-free railroad tracks. Walking on the level railroad bed as it
made its way bending and winding around and through the hills in
the open country had been a blessing to them, helping to conserve
what energy they had left after their violent encounter with the
German soldiers. It seemed strange to them, though, that no trains
had passed during the two hours they had been walking by the
tracks. This concern was short-lived as they approached a long,
sweeping curve in the rail line. Julia heard the striking of metal
on metal first and fell prone on the gravel shoulder to make
herself less visible. Eva quickly followed. The loud clanging
sounds would stop and start in a repetitive rhythm, like strange
code signals being telegraphed across the frozen land.

“
What is happening?” Julia
asked.

“
They’re laying new rails,
for sure, that’s all it could be. They’re coming this way,
too.”

Scrambling to her feet, Julia moved
quickly with Eva away from the shoulder into a narrow winding
crease between two snow-covered hills, until they could no longer
see the railroad. They had moved none too soon. Within seconds a
work crew and flatcar loaded with new twelve-foot steel rails
appeared, moving slowly around the long curve, followed by a squad
of German soldiers. Julia and Eva could hear a mixture of German
and Czech voices, one shouting angrily, the others in submissive,
meek tones.

“
What are they saying?”
Eva asked, unable to understand German as readily as
Julia.

“
The Germans are mad
because several rails were torn loose and damaged by saboteurs, and
the Czechs are working like snails to replace them. They want to
get back to Klatovy, too, where it’s warm,” Julia
whispered.

“
The rails looked okay
ahead of where we were walking.”

“
Yes, but if they come as
far as where we were, they will see our tracks leading away from
the railroad. They will think whoever made them tore up the
rails.”

“
They’ll not follow us far
if they do. They won’t leave the work crew unguarded and will wait
for reinforcements,” Eva said, crouching low and clearing a path as
best she could ahead of Julia through the heavy snow massed in the
gulley. In places it was knee deep, falling down inside her boots,
adding more winter misery to her already freezing feet. After about
a hundred yards, she looked back at the deep footprints trailing
behind them, which the Germans would easily see and use like a
roadmap to find them.

Julia saw the tracks they were making,
too. Unless they moved across the windswept open fields where much
of the snow had melted, the Germans would quickly catch up with
them. They would leave fewer tracks to follow there. Eva had
realized the same strategy, and together they moved quickly to the
top of a broad rolling hill on their right, daring to be seen in
the glaring sunlight now sweeping across the fields and hills like
a massive searchlight, the kind one might imagine God would use to
make the day, when there was no sun.

Looking from a distance like tiny
field rodents outlined against the vastness of the open
countryside, Julia and Eva raced rapidly from one hill to the next
back towards the road to Klatovy. Distant eyes had spotted them,
though, within seconds after their ascendancy to the first hilltop,
following every step they were taking. As they drew near the silent
observer, Julia saw a head suddenly appear and disappear quickly
behind several small piles of snow. Her face lit up when she
realized how the snow piles were arranged in a carefully
constructed square, like the walls of a fort, and its one lone
inhabitant hiding behind them was a young boy. Julia stopped and
nudged Eva to stop as well.

“
You have a very good
hiding place. May we please come in?” she said, speaking Czech to
the child.

At first the small child lay still
behind the snow wall, trying hard to look as if he were a part of
the frozen ground beneath him. When she took a step closer to him,
his head popped up again to look at her. Then he stood facing both
of them, a child who looked to be about nine, trembling with his
dark eyes painted over in terror. On the front of his soiled jacket
was a faded yellow star telling her, and everyone else who might
see him, he was a Jew. Julia sighed aloud. Coaxing him softly, she
held out her arms to him.

And when he came to her she embraced
him for several seconds, holding him tightly as if he were her own
Anna.

“
You must live near here,”
Eva said, hugging the boy, too.

But the boy remained silent, refusing
to look at Eva, or anywhere else, except to the motherly warmth in
Julia’s face. Sensing his fear, Julia wrapped her arms around him
again and whispered in his ear, “My name is Julia. Now you must
tell us yours—we are your friends.”

The boy looked again at Julia then
Eva.

“
Joseph, but my
grandmother calls me Josh,” he said in a barely audible
voice.

“
May we call you Josh,
too?” Julia said, holding both of his hands.

The boy smiled and nodded at his new
friends.

“
Is your home near here?
We’re tired and cold, and you must be too,” Eva said, slapping and
rubbing her face and hopping around in a silly way on one foot and
then the other, making Josh laugh out loud.

Still laughing, Josh pointed to some
fairly level fields slightly south from the direction Julia and Eva
were headed. With Julia holding one of Josh’s hands and Eva the
other, the three began a new and unexpected journey together as
they moved slowly over several hills leading to some open fields in
the distance. Julia looked at the strange color of the sky
overhead. The treasury of blue patches that had filled the sky
earlier in the day was now fading into bundles of gray clouds
tinged in red streaks from the setting sun. Darkness would surround
them soon, maybe with rain or more snow. The ground snow had begun
to freeze again as the temperature dropped, making walking
difficult again. They had come far this day from the place where
the plane had mistakenly dropped them. Shelter for the freezing
night was their first priority. Julia knew, as well as Eva, without
it, only God could decide if they would be alive when morning
came.

As they crossed the top of the high
hill leading down to the small valley where Josh’s home supposedly
was, a thin wisp of smoke could be seen wafting upwards from below.
Josh beamed and started to run towards its source, but Julia had
heard the angry shouts rising up from the valley and pulled him
quickly to the ground beside her. Eva had heard the voices, too and
dropped down next to them. Julia motioned to her to hold Josh and
cup her hand over his mouth, should he suddenly cry out. Then she
slowly inched along the ground, slithering like a large snake
through the remaining snow to a point where she could look down on
the terrible scene unfolding below.

Julia counted five motorcycles and an
armored touring car, the kind Gestapo generally used, parked next
to a stone house, much like the old man’s but quite a bit larger.
The German soldiers were standing in a half circle around an old
woman wearing only a thin nightgown and bleeding about her face and
head. Clinging to her frail legs were two small children, both
younger than Josh, trying to hide their faces from the human terror
crowding around them. Standing slightly to the side of the old
woman was a young officer sharply clad in the black uniform of the
Gestapo, shouting obscenities at her. Julia could hear every word.
There was nothing she or Eva could do to stop what was
coming.

“
Do you want to die, old
woman? I will beat you with my fists until you do, if that’s what
you want,” he said, knocking her to the ground again and kicking
her in the back and head with his heavy boots.

But the woman said nothing, getting
slowly to her feet with the two children huddled close against her,
their faces buried in her gown.

“
Where did the saboteurs
go? Where are they hiding?” he shouted again in a shrill voice that
carried far over the hills to where Eva waited with
Josh.

“
I swear before God, no
one has been here,” the woman cried in pain, forcing the words
through broken teeth dangling in her battered mouth.

The officer looked at the old woman
for a moment, disgusted, or perhaps amazed, that she had told him
nothing after suffering such a beating. Taking his Luger from the
holster, he shot the old woman at close range in the head,
splattering blood and brains over the two children kneeling beside
her. Then without hesitation, he shot both children in the
forehead. Waving to two soldiers standing near the front door, he
barked a command to put the dead woman and children in the house
and burn it to the ground. Nothing was to be left standing, not
even the two field haystacks that Julia had spotted earlier for
possible hiding places.

Within minutes the house morphed into
a roaring furnace of its own, the stone walls encasing the flames
within until they finally crumbled from the intense heat. Black
smoke from the burning buildings darkened the skies for miles
around, hiding the dying sun. What had taken place was only one
small scene of the terrible retribution the Nazis would exact in
human lives for what had happened. The railroad had been heavily
damaged by a growing underground resistance operating out of
Bratislava, long retreated to safety, leaving those living around
Klatovy, like the old woman, to suffer on their own in the days
ahead.

Julia had closed her eyes the second
the Gestapo officer drew his pistol to execute the woman and
children. She knew he would not leave and let them live. Peace has
few boundaries, war even less where the innocent have no armies of
their own. Later, when Josh was asleep, she would ask Eva what kind
of a man would kill little children without hesitating at least for
a second to think of what he was doing. He would be from another
world, she would answer. Yet, those are the kind who walk among us,
even as neighbors, who could kill a child as easily as they would a
deer or a rabbit. The problem is, we don’t always know who they
are, or might be, because we are still animals, too, all of
us.

With the fire fully ablaze and the
Germans leaving, Julia crawled back to where Eva and the boy Josh
were waiting. Both were numb from lying still so long on the frozen
ground and welcomed Julia’s return with chattering teeth from the
cold. Eva first had spread half her body across Josh, adding warmth
to the boy as well as herself. But it was not enough to hold back
the cold rising from the earth beneath them. The bowels of a
glacier would be warmer, Eva believed, than the ground they were
lying on. After five minutes, she turned on her side and embraced
Josh as lovers might do, holding his small body close to hers. When
the rising smoke came into view, Eva turned her body slightly so he
would be blind to what was happening, lest he cry out and struggle
to free himself and run to the house.

It had seemed like an hour before
Julia slowly inched her way back to the nearly frozen pair. Before
she revealed to Eva the terrifying scene that had blackened her
eyes with its horror, she took Josh in her arms and kissed him on
both cheeks. Then, smiling through the tears drowning her heart,
she rubbed and massaged his fingers and hands until a red rush of
warmth returned in them. She then asked him in Czech if he
understood German, which he answered “no.” Speaking German, Julia
offered him a candy bar, but Josh only hunched his shoulders in
ignorance at her words.

Julia’s eyes spoke to Eva before her
words in German did describing the ghastly sight she had witnessed.
Earlier Josh had told them, as they were moving across the hills
towards his house, that he lived with his grandmother and two
younger sisters. His mother had bled to death at home giving birth
to the younger of the two sisters after his father had left for
Prague to join the Czech army. When questioned about his father, he
knew nothing, since he had been gone for three years. With no
Jewish kin near, Josh was now Julia and Eva’s problem. He would go
with the two women wherever the roads took them, until he could be
fostered in safe hands.