Child of the Light (36 page)

"You
sent those animals to the club! Not Goebbels." Erich felt the rope of his gut twist tighter. They were your
boys!"

"And why not? You
must
learn--"

Erich's fury exploded.
Get him, Taurus. Tear the son of a bitch to pieces.

Taurus lunged for the lieutenant. For an instant, Erich hesitated--just long enough for Hempel to know the attack was no accident. Then he grabbed her collar and tugged her away.

The lieutenant lay on the ground, shaking. His wolfhound whined and licked his face.

Erich stared down in horror. He had allowed--instructed--Taurus to attack an officer. He should stoop and help the man. Apologize.

He could not bring himself to commit such hypocrisy. Instead, after mentally commanding Taurus to sit, he leaned over just enough to remove the Mann from Hempel's holster. The braid on the handle felt slick and soft. Looking more closely he realized it was human hair. Nauseated, he unhooked the braid and pitched it and the pistol into the hedge.

The lieutenant groaned and opened his eyes. As he sat up, he gave Erich a perverse, suave smile.

"How kind of you, Herr Rittmeister, and how crass of me. I forgot it was your birthday and did not buy you a gift. And here you are giving me such a priceless one." He fingered blood-rimmed teeth marks on the back of his hand. "I do believe you have given me incentive for doing anything I wish to you and your brood."

Fist clenched, Erich stood over him. "The hell I have."

"Something's already in the works, Herr Rittmeister. When the dogs are fully trained, I will have them." His smile broadened. "But not now. Not yet."

"Stick to buggering boys." Fuming, Erich strode down the section of drive that ran to the garage, Taurus trotting alongside. She has tasted blood, Erich thought. The worst thing that could happen to a guard dog. Would that make her too emotionally unstable for duty? If so, he would cover for her; that was what partners were for.

He opened one of the garage doors and switched on the light. The place was dank and smelled of oil. Two rows of vehicles, civilian cars and military jeeps and cycles, faced one another beneath the bare bulb. The cars that were still Konrad's responsibility, Rathenau's limousine and the Daimler, were parked on each side of Goebbels' SSK Mercedes Benz. Beside the limo hulked the Gauleiter's pride, a Minerva Landaulet imported from Belgium. Next to the Daimler an empty parking space awaited the prize Goebbels wanted: a Sears, from the American catalogue.

Erich had never touched the Daimler. Now, running a gloved hand across the smooth curve of its fender, he thought of Miriam, sheathed in black silk, singing before the floodlights. He banged his fist down. Why must she always demean him! Why did he keep pushing? He should not even be associating with her, or with Solomon--especially after tonight's episode at Ananas. Any fool could see their ties were a danger to him, and to them...more so, now that he and Hempel had declared open warfare.

He cursed himself for allowing Hempel to goad him like that. If Hempel filed charges--not that he could prove anything--things could get messy. The man's past was an open secret; his own could as easily become one. Any of his Abwehr superiors could insist he cut all ties with his impure past. Burying it could literally mean burying Miriam and the Freunds.

He shuddered.

Trading his overcoat for a flight jacket and the leather helmet he kept in one of the lockers along the east wall, he climbed onto his cycle. He kick-started it with such force that he almost toppled the machine, and raced the engine without regard for Goebbels' comfort. He roared out of the door and up the incline, waving at Krayller to open the gate.

With Taurus loping next to him, Erich wound his motorcycle through the Grünewald and past the Tiergarten. He had gone through Potsdamer Platz and was cruising up Friedrich Ebert Strasse, throttled down and coasting in neutral, by the time he acknowledged to himself he wasn't running from something as much as to something: he wanted to go home.

He slowed to a halt in front of the cigar shop. It looked dark and forlorn, and the lights of Das Ostleute Haus bathed him in blue. Snow had begun to fall. He gripped his lapels together against the cold and stared at the elongated reflections the street lamps cast as the pavement gave itself over to white. Across the street, the curb and the ragged blue-spruce hedge seemed like a line someone had drawn in the powder, daring him to cross. But he was not ready--yet.

A woman in a fur coat stepped around the corner and into the blue light. For a split second it seemed as if one of the furrier's mannequins had come alive. Then he saw the whip and the high-heeled boots so capable of trampling across a man's conscience. The fury and nervous near-exhaustion he had thought he had shed on the Ku'damm returned to suffocate him.

"Evening, soldier." The woman lifted her gaze seductively.

Taurus, panting from the run, went rigid and bared her teeth. No sound. Her affect was one of silent, mean cunning.

The woman backed away. "Some animal you've got there." Fear in her voice.

He switched off the engine but held onto the handlebars as he strained to see into the Freund-Weisser apartments.

Twirling her whip, the woman circled Taurus and stepped saucily toward Erich. "Want to be my slave? Or perhaps I should be yours? I don't mind pain if the money's right."

"How much are you willing to pay?" Erich asked in an off-hand tone, not looking at her.

"Pay?" She laughed and tried a new approach. "Don't want to be alone on Christmas Eve, do you, Sugar Plum?"

"That's exactly what I do want."

Still gripping the cycle, he stared into the darkness, imagining Miriam kissing Solomon's fingers, easing his hand down over her breast and belly to her thighs, she sliding her fingers down his chest. Damn her! Those three in the alley behind the El Dorado had gloried in whoredom, yet even in his mind's eye he could not force Miriam to compromise herself.

"What's wrong, honey? Cat got your tongue?"

She took a feather from her coat and drew it across the nape of his neck. Giggling, she slipped a hand in his coat, reaching for his crotch. He debated having her get on her knees to service him--power-prayer, he called it--but pulled away.

He wanted to wish his mother a Merry Christmas and maybe drink a schnapps with his father. He could stand the old man for that long. Except Miriam might hear him upstairs and think he had come around because of her, he thought, knowing full well that he was making excuses and that Miriam could not possibly distinguish his footsteps from those of any stranger.

"Prefer boys?" the prostitute asked.

"Bitch!"

Letting go of the cycle, Erich backhanded her as hard as he could. The machine fell with a crash. Dropping the whip, the woman put her fingers tentatively against her cheek. Erich slapped her again. Hard. As she stumbled and landed on her knees, Taurus leapt. She sank her teeth into the wrist, just above her the glove. When the whore's flesh broke against her canines, Taurus quietly hunkered down. Belly tensed and shoulder muscles rippling, she swallowed and bit deeper.

Blood ran down the whore's arm and she screamed, her face contorted with terror, her acne-scarred cheeks as death-white as

rotted carp flesh. An electric tingling rolled down Erich's spine. He stiffened. The street lamp took on the form of a lopsided moon, and a feeling that he was surrounded by greenery and gloom suffused him. He felt hot, sweaty. Then, just as abruptly, he was cold again, looking down on the whore and thinking how ludicrous women really were.

For all their power, life rendered them as helpless as men.

Berlin was alive with lights.

The New Year, the Führer had assured everyone, would ring in greater times for the New Order, and so the Reich was beribboned and pulsing with music and laughter.

Solomon waited outside Ananas for Miriam to finish her performance. Around him, couples clung to one another as they reeled along the pavement, many with half-finished bottles of champagne in hand. He tried to feel their joy, but he could not see or feel beyond their swastika armbands--their emblems of hope and the coming happiness. He kept to the shadows, estranged from the crowds yet part of them--like a man dining alone in a fine restaurant, aware of the quality food but unable to enjoy it because he had no one with whom to share the meal.

He wished Miriam would hurry. Since the Christmas Eve incident on Friedrich Ebert Strasse, he had walked her home every night rather than having her take the trolley. According to the papers, an overcoated, enormous-nosed Jew had attacked one Gisela Haas while she was out collecting money for the poor.
Der Stürmer,
the most viciously and openly anti-Semitic of the papers, compared her wounds to those inflicted by Peter Stumpf, the self-confessed werewolf convicted of lycanthropy in Cologne in 1598 and flayed alive on All-Hallows Eve. It was suggested that perhaps the Jew was seeking a virgin's menstrual blood for another satanic rite to be perpetrated against the Holy Child.

Such nonsense! Not that the truth was relevant; only the danger to Miriam was. The heritage of the family who owned the cigar shop was no secret, nor was hers. Audiences at Ananas knew she was Jewish. Fink, now the cabaret's manager, did what he could to defuse the jeers and shield her from the bottles that were occasionally thrown while she performed, but it was up to Solomon to keep her safe. If she walked in the streets unescorted, it was just a matter of time before something happened to her.

Miriam emerged at last, slipping furtively through the cabaret's service entrance. She held her coat close, like protective armor, and smiled at the sight of him.

"How do you always manage to look happy?" Sol bent and kissed her, wondering for the thousandth time what miracle had finally brought her to him.

"Shouldn't I be? The past is gone. Buried. No sense dwelling on its ugliness." She looped her arm through his.

"You have a God-given talent for optimism." The way her eyes reflected the holiday lights overhead enchanted him.

Right before Chanukah, a week before Christmas Eve, she had come to his bedroom with the ease and familiarity of a wife. Her attitude was perfect, for had she been hesitant, he might have kept his distance, and had she been too bold, he would have been overly concerned with his performance. He had consummated the sexual act only once before, with a prostitute Erich goaded him into buying. It had been a dismal failure, too ephemeral to constitute reality, and he had continued to think of himself as a virgin.

With Miriam, lovemaking was a glorious event. Like children holding hands at the ocean's edge, they laughed and splashed and leaped over waves, daring each other to go together into deeper and deeper water, and he did not even care that his parents and Recha might hear them.

Nodding and smiling at passers-by like any Gentile couple, they walked home along Leipziger Strasse, past Wertheim's. Like the KadeWe's square-block delicatessen, perhaps the world's largest, Wertheim's was for all practical purposes off-limits to Jews. The Depression had again brought scarcity to the Fatherland, so Aryans--real Germans--were to be fed and clothed first.

Thank God people still found money for tobacco, Sol thought, seeing the crowd that milled outside
Die Zigarrenkiste
. "Looks like Herr Weisser was right," he said. "He insisted business would be good tonight, so we should turn up the lights and stay open late. 'What good is a holiday brandy without a fine cigar.'"

Miriam laughed at his imitation of Herr Weisser. "See, you worry needlessly about leaving him to handle the shop."

Sol hugged her, slipping his hands inside her coat so he could hold her more tightly.

She was right; he worried too much. Like his father, he feared things might not be done correctly unless he did them himself. He needed to rely more not only on Miriam and Herr Weisser but also on his mother and Frau Weisser. On Papa too, perhaps. Lately there were days when Papa's melancholia--he laughed at himself for his use of the illness' archaic name, as though that romanticized it and thus lessened its reality--released its grip. At those times, Jacob was able and willing to help with small tasks. Since Christmas Eve, when Miriam came home from Ananas so distraught and Sol held her through the night as she cried, Jacob kept the curtains and window open when he rocked. He wanted, he said, to hear all the horror outside, and did not seem to mind the chill that seized the room.

Sol checked his watch as they neared the crowd. Three in the morning. "Herr Weisser has extended his midnight special. He enjoys spreading happiness on nights like this."

"I think the general idea is for the customers to do the spreading...of their money."

Sol laughed but his laughter died in the air. Grabbing Miriam's hand, he rushed forward. Something was very wrong. The crowd was static, gawking. Nobody was going inside the shop, no one coming out, and the door of the shop was open, its glass shattered.

"I don't care who they are, people ought not to be treated like that," said a hefty woman on the crowd's outskirts.

"Nonsense, Luise." The skinny man beside her was on tiptoes, straining to see. "They've been cheating people for years. Don't you listen to what the Führer says?"