A Perfect Madness (8 page)

Julia went to bed, but would not
sleep. The terrible dream that she might lose Erich was there,
waiting somewhere in the room for her eyes to close, and she would
not let that happen.

***

FIVE

W
e are all equal at
our beginnings. But only for a moment. Then we become what history
has long promised we must be. A few do escape, though, grabbed at
birth by other gods promising a different destiny. The rest remain
to struggle with what awaits them. Such was Julia and her family’s
promises given by history. The ancient Hebrew blood of her
ancestors flowed through every vein in Julia’s body, leaving no
other course but that which was about to come.

Standing next to Julia, Erich’s eyes
focused on the official announcement recently posted by the
university barring all Jewish students henceforth from the
university, including the medical school. Before Julia could finish
reading the devastating news herself, derisive cheers began to
break out from the Sudeten students when they saw her with
Erich.

“
Get out, go, Jew, back to
your filthy hole where you belong.”

Erich quickly took Julia’s hand,
leading her outside into a small courtyard and then away from the
campus. The German university’s decision to dismiss all Jewish
students was not unexpected. During the hot summer months, he had
huddled almost nightly with Julia and her family around their
radio, listening to the growing thunder of the Third Reich, now no
longer distant, demanding autonomy for the Sudetenland. Nothing
changed, though, until the following spring, when the Austrian
Anschluss
fell from the darkening clouds gathering over
Prague like a thunderbolt hurled by Ares, the Greek god of war. No
one spoke. There was nothing to discuss. But Julia glanced
hurriedly at Erich to capture his face, as if it would be the last
time they would be together.

At first, Erich refused to return to
the university without Julia, insisting that were he to do so, it
would be tantamount to accepting the newly adopted anti-Semitic
policies. Instead, Dr. Kaufmann urged, he must become a voice of
reason within the university, crying out at every opportunity
against the rising sea of hatred now threatening to engulf all of
Prague as it had Germany. He would do so, Erich promised Dr.
Kaufmann, and do it well.

Monday morning at the university came
slowly to Erich and the other students, as if history had decided
to sit down and rest, perhaps to catch its breath and look around
one last time before stepping into the smoldering fire waiting
patiently for it. Sitting down in the main lecture hall, Erich
glanced quickly around the room before realizing that he was alone
in his row of twelve seats. No one sought his company, nor would
they in the weeks ahead. The Jewish students were gone as well, and
most of the non-German Czech students. The ones remaining now
professed their own carefully rehearsed allegiance to Germany.
Later Erich would say to Julia and her father, “The bugs are
sneaking out of their holes.”

Two weeks passed before Erich felt
comfortable with the drastically changed student body. Everyone
knew of his continuing relationship with Julia, but said nothing to
him, as if waiting for a signal to do so. Then it happened. The
wild shouts of the Sudeten German students rang out across the
campus, their stamping feet echoing down every hall as they emptied
the university buildings. Screaming on the airwaves, Hitler had
promised that the liberation of the “oppressed” Sudeten Germans was
near and that the Sudeten National Socialist Party would lead the
way. Having left the empty classroom, Erich walked across the
street and sat down on a curbside bench and looked back at the
campus walkways filling with shouting students gathering throughout
the university. The sound and fury unfolding across the campus
became deafening, much like what he had witnessed years back with
his father at Berlin University. It was then that the mind of
reason began to weep as great bonfires began devouring a thousand
books of knowledge, sending their ashes high into the night sky,
never to be read again. The sight before Erich was little different
than what he imagined the ancient German tribal warriors looked
like as they danced in a frenzied madness around their fires at
night. Even his father seemed moved by the burning of such
knowledge. Years later, though, when asked by Erich about the dark
night and the burning of the books, he could hardly recall
it.

Before the students could move across
the different streets ringing the campus to demonstrate their joy
by smashing the store windows of all known Jews, the Prague police
arrived and cordoned off the campus until a controlled calmness
took hold of the students. One by one, the rowdiest were forced to
line up in a long row and wait on the police captain to take down
their names before hauling them off to the central office. As the
captain, a lean and timid-looking man wearing tiny spectacles,
started down the line of students, he stopped abruptly in front of
the tall, blond Sudeten German student. “Name?” the captain asked
meekly, noticing the National Socialist Party armband on the
student.

“
Franz Kremer.”

“
Age?”

“
Twenty-seven.”

“
Are you a student at the
university?”

“
No, but I will be again
when the Führer comes to Prague,” Franz answered in a voice loud
enough for Erich, who was sitting directly across the street from
him, to hear clearly the threatening words.

At the sound of Franz’s voice shouts
of approval rolled down the line of students like the rumbling of
distant thunder. Fixing a freezing stare on the captain, Franz
continued, “Now is the time for you and your men to take a stand.
You are either with us or against us. And rest assured, we will
remember you when the given day comes.”

Looking across the street at Erich, he
screamed, “You piece of dog dung. You lover of Jewish devils. Hell
will not be big enough to hold the Jews when we’re through with
them.”

Erich tried to smile at Franz’s words,
but couldn’t. He knew such words were no longer empty boasts, but
would soon be filled with the gaseous insanity of intolerance
already sweeping into Czechoslovakia and the rest of the Eastern
European states. Later he would come to believe it had always been
there, hidden from ages past by brittle bits of reason, waiting for
the right moment to show its face again. Erich turned away, leaving
the police captain to wrestle with his own courage in the face of
Franz’s warning.

After a twenty-minute walk that
carried him through the Old Town square and across the Charles
Bridge to Mala Strana, he entered a small coffeehouse sitting at
the edge of the Vltava River and made his way to an empty table.
The coffeehouse was number two on the list of his and Julia’s
favorite places, because at nighttime they could stroll unseen to a
host of hidden places along the banks of the great river to talk
and make love. Many times they would simply lie for hours entwined
in each other’s arms listening to the gurgling waters passing
nearby, or to the soft voices of other young lovers seeking their
own Eden among the heavy shrubs and foliage growing at the edge of
the river. Other times they would talk, always pretending, about
their future life together, children and doctoring and maybe
leaving Prague, but never about what they knew was sure to
come.

Erich sipped the strong black coffee
and wished he had a cigarette to help calm the angst squeezing his
body and mind with its paralyzing fingers. Surely as he stood there
looking at the police captain and Franz, he knew Franz was right.
The Sudeten Germans would be yanked free from the Czechs at Munich
in a matter of days, and Prague would soon follow in a few
months.

Erich sighed audibly. It seemed no
one, not himself, nor even the great powers, had the stomach to
defend anymore what was good. Duty to the state had become
paramount to truth, when it should be the other way around. He was
witnessing the wrenching birth of a monster that would kill its
mother. Prague would soon be dead.

Erich studied his empty coffee cup
like a seer reading tea leaves, hoping to find an answer to the
promise that history had in store for him. For the first time in
his life he felt frightened over his very own existence, not just
Julia’s and her family’s. He decided that he must go to Julia and
persuade her to leave with him now, as they had talked about, and
if not with him, with her father and family. They could travel
south with other Jewish refugees making their way to Palestine, or
to Lisbon, or the Netherlands.

But he had nothing, only the meager
allowance his father was still willing to provide each month, even
though they had not spoken from the day his father’s terrifying
position on treatment of the Jews became known. Erich sighed again,
only louder, causing patrons at a nearby table to glance his way.
He knew the Health Ministry would soon begin calling in all the
young German doctors for service, too, and his name would be on the
list when he graduated. For now, there really was no clear way open
for him to escape what history had promised him.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the
café, Erich knocked on Julia’s front door. As soon as she opened
the door, he could tell she had been crying, because crying to her
was a constant distant thing, never to be expected from the way she
grabbed and took hold of life every conscious second of the day.
There wasn’t a moment of living that she regretted. “They were
given moments,” she would say, “and that makes them holy.” So Erich
was puzzled by the watery sadness in her eyes. Hearing his familiar
knock, Julia had rushed to wipe away the outpouring of tears
brought on by the humiliation her father had faced earlier in the
afternoon while seeking the company of his colleagues at the
University café.

Dr. Kaufmann was sitting alone in his
study, facing the small front window, watching the last light of
the day grow gray. It was always a special time of day to inhale
what God has given us, he would tell Julia and her brother Hiram.
And together the three would watch the evening shadows grow bold
with descending shades of darkness and shapes until there was only
blackness. For Julia and Hiram, though, it was not the glory of God
that filled their eyes with wonder, but the tugging on the
imagination as they eagerly sought out the faces and monsters of
the world hidden among the moving shadows. Not every day, but some,
Julia would find the stoic face of Rabbi Loew’s golem staring back
at her before quickly fading into another strange form. But now she
saw nothing, the face of the golem having vanished along with her
childhood dreams.

Dr. Kaufmann did not turn around when
Erich and Julia entered the study. He was lost now in the past,
wandering somewhere with his ancient fathers who, so many times,
had been cast from Prague like lepers of old. He had taken Julia
with him for a late afternoon lunch and coffee with a mixed group
of Czech writers and medical colleagues, all old friends, at the
University café. Entering the café, Dr. Kaufmann took Julia by the
arm and walked towards a large table around which sat four men and
a woman. There were no empty chairs awaiting him and Julia. Dr.
Kaufmann also noticed the absence of his two Jewish friends who
usually dined with them. No one looked at them as they neared the
silent group. Before he could speak, Dr. Polacek, a professor of
anatomy at Charles University, looked up at Dr. Kaufmann and Julia,
and in a cold rehearsed tone said, “Do not sit down with us. You
are no longer welcome here.”

“
I don’t understand. We
are Czechs and old friends, not Germans,” Dr. Kaufmann stammered,
clearly stunned by Professor Polacek’s words. All the people seated
before him, though, stared at their plates, none daring to look at
him and Julia. He had become a leper.

Without looking up, Professor Polacek
repeated his admonishment to Dr. Kaufmann. “Once, yes, but not now.
You must leave us alone. Go away.”

Before Dr. Kaufmann could respond,
Julia tugged on her father’s arm, turning him away from the table
to face her.

“
Come with me, Father,”
she said, taking him by the hand. “Believe me, no one here is
worthy of breaking bread with you.”

Then Julia looked at her father’s old
friends, all sorely shamed by their disavowal of his presence with
them. She knew them all well, had played with their children and
dined in their homes and sat in their university classes when she
grew to womanhood; yet a lifetime of friendship had wilted and died
this day because the sun had disappeared from the broad skies over
Prague.

“
Cowards! All of you,” she
said in a loud voice, causing those around to look at her, and then
at the table of professors whose faces were paled with fright, none
daring to watch their friend leave.

Dr. Kaufmann meekly followed Julia to
the door, saying nothing. Nor did he speak again during their long
walk home from the coffeehouse. After entering the house, he went
straight to the study, turned his chair around to face the window
and sat down. Three hours later, when Erich arrived, Julia brought
him into the study, hoping to break through the spell that had
captured her father, who still had not spoken or moved. Urged on by
Julia, Erich tried to initiate a dialogue about nothing with Dr.
Kaufmann to have him question the silliness of his thoughts as he
always did. But nothing came. Nothing in the silence that followed.
And soon Erich quit trying. The professor, now suddenly grown old
from hurt, continued sitting in silence long after Erich left, no
longer looking at the close of day and the sights he loved, but
staring blindly into an emptiness that covered his window with a
terror heretofore unknown to him and his family.