Child of the Light (14 page)

Except with Miriam.

So what, he thought, if he'd only seen her twice! He knew what he wanted, and he would take her anywhere...not that he had much chance of ever seeing her again after Papa's outburst. If only the Foreign Minister had taken
him
to luncheon too, none of this mess would have happened! What made Solomon so special? Like Papa said: Jews of a feather...

Still, it was not Solomon's fault, so he should not be angry at his friend--especially since Sol had come down to the sewer, at night yet, to make sure he was all right. Rathenau and Papa, they were the ones who had caused the problem. A rich fool and a stupid
hamster
. No wonder Herr Freund treated Papa like an underling.

He clamped his lips together and clenched his fists, fighting to harden himself against the squirrelly feeling that always formed after a fight with his father. Go home, Erich, it said. Forget what your father did and take your punishment like a man. You're smart and tough even if he isn't. You will find a way to fix things with Miriam.

The next realization followed just as inevitably. His father would not punish him. Too many hours had elapsed. The time for yelling was over; by now Papa was bound to be sleeping off a sherry sulk. Awakened, he would listen silently as Erich stammered an apology, then with a sluggish wave of his hand send him to his bedroom. After an hour or two he would come in to say he understood. And would accept. And forgive.

Who did he think he was--God?

Anger rose in Erich again, like a pot of frustration boiling over a stove whose flame would not go out. If he tried to remove the pot, his fingers would burn; if he did not, it would boil over. Again.

Abruptly, he cut through an alley toward Lutherstrasse. He would walk past the rectory and see if a light were on. Not knock or anything. But maybe Father Dahns would be outside watering the tulips before morning Mass. He would know what to do. After all, was not that what
real
Fathers were for--to fix things?

Once Mass began he could slip down the back stairs and nap for an hour among the pews stored in the basement. He knew the building well, catechism classes having been a mix of piety and hide-and-seek while Father Dahns--elderly, always smiling--alternately scolded and blessed.

Erich had loved the Mass, with its colors and mysticism, but had stopped attending two years ago. How could he confess that he adored the pageantry more than God, if indeed there were a God? After Papa's shouting, Mama's tears, and Father Dahn's questioning, amid the smiles, about Herr Weisser's own absence from church, there had come Papa's mute, angry acquiescence...and, for Erich, Sundays in the stockroom.

No. On second thought, he had better not talk to Father Dahns; it was just too complicated. Besides, he was
not
going back, no matter what Father Dahns said, not even if Papa found him and begged or beat him.

He felt in his pocket and discovered a few coins, enough to take a tram to Wannsee and the Youth camp. If only he had enough to go really far away, someplace where Papa would never find him. Munich, maybe--the camp leaders called it Heaven. Or maybe hike and camp all over Germany, as the Wandervögel had before the war.

I am as much to blame as anyone,
he thought, stumbling along and blinking bleary eyes at the neon lights of the El Dorado nightclub.
Always trying to be the big shot.

In the half-light of the overcast morning, he could see people lounging near the infamous club, smoking and laughing, waiting for the doors to open. Inside, it was said, men danced with men and kissed each other right in the open and, in darkened corners, rubbed each other's penises. Why would men do such things? Nah, it was nonsense--rumors concocted to draw people away from the Tauentzienstrasse, where women with whips and laced-up boots turned good German men into sex slaves. Like in that movie he had sneaked into--
Goddess, Whore, and Woman.
Not even Sol knew he had seen it.

Well, maybe not actually seen it, but almost. The usher had found him soon after the opening credits, so he had not really seen much and, truth to tell, he had not been sorry to be thrown out. Ugh! No wonder the papers called the film "criminal, sensational, erotic, sadistic."
 
Erotic was one thing. He liked that word--liked how it made him feel warm inside. But the sadistic stuff--did human beings honestly do those things?

Erich avoided the figures outside the El Dorado as if they were alley cats. Afraid to turn his back on them, he moved in a wide semi-circle, fighting an urge to run as some of them looked his way and smirked. Clear of them, he swiveled and, fear chilling his exposed back, started to hurry away.

"Want a lesson,
Schatzie?"
A blowzy blonde leaned out of the shadows. She sucked deeply on a silver cigarette holder as long as a reed and blew a stream of smoke his way. "What do you say, baby-face? I'll make bacon and eggs for breakfast." Apparently mistaking his shock and curiosity for interest, she held out a languorous arm, gloved in elbow-length white lace.

Erich shook his head and, knapsack slapping against his back, dashed down one alley and rounded a corner. Bacon and eggs sounded awfully good, but thanks to Solomon he was not starving. Slowing, he licked the vestiges of Frau Freund's double chocolate icing from his fingers. That damn Solomon! Getting mad at him was easy; staying mad was impossible. He was always so
nice.

He looked around to get his bearings, then tried another alley. It proved to be a dead-end littered with garbage and peopled by rats. Maybe he should take a tram back to the flat and forget the whole thing like Papa would--or at least he could pretend to. He ran back to the main street and found he had circled back to the alley corner, near the prostitute. He turned in another direction in the alleys' maze.

When he saw the blinking of the El Dorado neon toward the end of the next alley, he congratulated himself on how cleverly he had circumnavigated the woman. He could see three figures swathed in shadow near the nightclub's back door, but could think of no way to avoid them. With renewed bravado he decided to walk by and pretend not to notice them or what they were doing--whatever that turned out to be.

Whistling softly, he plunged his hands into his pockets and started forward. He had taken no more than a few steps when a man called to him.

"Over here. Join us--there's always room for one more."

Gorge rising in panic, Erich stopped in his tracks. He stared in the direction of the voice. Otto Hempel was slurring his words slightly. Like Papa, when he's had too much to drink, Erich thought. Nonetheless, there was no mistaking the voice--or the silver hair.

Run,
he told himself.
Get away.

But the same combination of fascination and horror he had experienced in the movie theater kept his feet planted as firmly as if he had taken root on Lutherstrasse.

"A shy one, huh? Rather just watch, would you?" The Youth-group leader laughed softly. "Well, that's all right too. But why not move closer? I'd like to see your face."

Leaning against the building, Hempel placed one hand against the back of the head of a blond youth kneeling in front of him. His other hand held what appeared to be a riding crop. A uniform jacket lay crumpled on the sidewalk, beside his feet. Near the jacket, head lowered and bare to the waist, was a second boy about Erich's age.

Raising his hand high in the air, Hempel whipped down hard on the youth's bare shoulder. The boy whimpered but did not cry out.

"Don't!" Erich's shout emerged as a gargled whisper through the bile in his throat. Finally able to move, he started toward the youth and held out his hand to help him to his feet.

The boy shook him off. "Get away!" He stared up at Erich, his eyes filled with hatred. "Find your own. This one's ours!"

"More! Beg for more." Hempel's voice was husky.

"More!"

Even in the half-light, Erich could see thick red welts forming where the crop had bitten into the boy's skin, crisscrossing each other as again and again the crop came down. Then Hempel groaned loudly and, tossing the whip aside, pressed down on the blond head with both hands. He moved against the boy's head with short, purposeful jabs.

Crawling forward, the second youth joined his friend and knelt at Hempel's feet.

Feeling sicker than he ever had in his life, Erich turned and ran blindly down Lutherstrasse. Where he was going did not matter--home, Munich, the camp--as long as he put distance between himself and what he had just seen.

"Solomon. Wake up."

"It can't be time." Sol groaned. He had tossed and turned until well beyond daylight, hopelessly trying to make sense of Erich's overreaction and of the horrible voices and sounds in the sewer. He felt as if he had only just closed his eyes. "Erich hasn't--"

He started to say that Erich had not banged on the floor upstairs the way he did every morning so they could walk to the
Gymnasium
together. Then he remembered it was Saturday--
Shabbas
--the day Erich went to school without him. He had slept right through his friend's morning noises.

"Must I go to synagogue?" Sol asked, knowing full well what the answer would be, especially so close to his bar mitzvah. "I hate missing school."

"Hate is not a word to be used so lightly," his father said. "Besides, there are schools and there are schools. At times one becomes more important than the other. If we allowed you to go to school on
Shabbas,
it would make trouble for those Jewish children whose parents forbid it." He opened the curtains and stared out the window. "Already it's too late for us to get to the morning study group. You were sleeping so soundly, your mother and I decided not to wake you. Now get a move on. I intend to be there in time for services. These days, fewer and fewer people come to
shul
--they will need me to make a
minyan
for morning services."

"Are Mama and Recha coming?"

"Mama has a headache. Recha must stay with her."

Pushing aside his eiderdown, Sol swung his legs over the side of the bed. It gave him a sense of pride to think that once he had been bar mitzvahed, he could help make up the
minyan
--the ten men needed before a service could be conducted. For now, though, he counted only as the son of Jacob Freund.

Picking up Sol's glasses, which lay lenses down on the night stand, Jacob breathed on them and rubbed them vigorously with the edge of Sol's sheet. "Still angry with me about that spanking I gave you last weekend?" He handed Sol the glasses.

Sol put a hand on his behind.

Jacob Freund smiled sadly. "Some lessons can only be learned when pressure is brought to bear. You will have to make many more...painful, shall we say...decisions in your life. Teaching you cause and effect is part of my job."

"But--"

His papa silenced him with a wave of the hand. "But? There are no
buts.
We both did what we had to do--you felt you had to help your friend, I felt you were doing yourself and his family an injustice by encouraging the estrangement between Erich and his papa. Now get dressed. It will do us good to sit together under the eyes of God."

As he was getting ready, Sol replayed the events of the week. His being with Herr Rathenau. Erich threatening his papa. The monster snapping at his heels in the sewer and the inhuman laughter that, somehow, incomprehensibly, was Erich's. Except for his luncheon with the Foreign Minister, the events seemed less like reality than the ghoulish, neo-Gothic movies playing all over Berlin:
Dr. Caligari
--and
The Golem,
which had Judaic implications.

Erich had been acting very peculiarly the whole week. His moodiness was nothing new, nor was his quick temper, but at least he had shared things before. This week, he had been uncommunicative, refusing to talk about where he had gone after he left the sewer, not answering when Sol why he had not gone to live at the camp after all. He had not even talked about Miriam and, if that were not strange enough, he had stayed in his room listening to music, and reading.
Erich, reading!

Half an hour later, Sol and his father were on their way to the Zoo Station to take the S-Bahn to the Grünewald--a concession to the late hour, since they usually obeyed the Sabbath law and walked all the way. Even from the station, it was a fair walk to the synagogue, which lay nestled among the oaks and chestnut trees that proliferated in the lush suburb. Berlin's most affluent citizens, including Walther Rathenau, had villas there, and Erich's camp was only a couple of kilometers away, a short rowboat ride across the Wannsee.

What if Erich had played truant from school, as he often did, and they came across him strutting down the road in his uniform?

The idea was enough to make Sol genuinely anxious to get to
shul.
Anything was better than the possibility of having to explain Erich's uniform to Papa. Even if he would soon be considered a man in the eyes of God, the contemplation of such a thing sent his stomach going into the kind of loop it did on the roller coaster at Luna Park. Perhaps if he gave himself up to the sense of peace that pervaded the synagogue, God would see fit to send him some rationale for the events of the past week.

"We should hurry, Papa, or we'll be late."