Child of the Light (42 page)

Good Yomtov
--happy holiday--he thought grimly as, heads down against the rain and the fear of being recognized, they raced to the shop. One of the windows had been knocked out, the other was cracked. The door hung lopsided on a single hinge. Smoke filled the room.

Sol pressed his arm against his mouth and nose, and indicated for Miriam to do the same. She stood in the center of the shop, peering over her arm, quietly crying. Her muffled sobs made him realize that, despite the day's horror, these were the first tears she had shed. She was amazing he thought, looking at her as he stumbled around in search of his father.

Display cases lay knocked over and shattered. Glass, cigars, cigarettes and smoking accouterments cluttered the floor. He backtracked to the door and, lowering his arm from his face, peered out at the carnage.

"Must have taken him outside," he said.

Miriam wiped her eyes and lowered her hand. "Maybe he's all right and went downstairs to put out the fire." She pointed at the ribbon of smoke seeping beneath the curtain of the alcove to the basement. "Most of the smoke is going out the door, so he shouldn't be suffering too badly from inhalation."

Sol hurried across the room and, with a growing sense of doom, he threw open the curtain.

Jacob Freund hung upside down, his feet attached to the overhead plumbing by a strand of thick wire. His eyes were open. His mouth had been gagged with a Nazi armband, and his Iron Cross dangled from his neck.

"Papa!" Sol felt the blood leave his face. He reached for his father, but his resolve gave way, and he sagged against the wall. "No! Oh, God, no!"

After a moment he took a deep breath and managed to stand upright. He wedged his fingers between the old man's neck and the twisted ribbon that had stopped the breathing. "May it go easier for you in the afterlife," he cried bitterly. "May your soul flourish in
Olam Haba."

He laid his cheek against his father's flesh. Already it was becoming cold.

I truly loved Herr Freund.
Tears rolling down Miriam's face. She turned from watching the rain--said to be sent by God when a good man died--to watching Solomon. He cut the body down from the rafter and placed it gently on the floor. Pulling up a stool from behind the counter, he removed his shoes, sat down, and wept.

Yes, my Solomon. Cry for your papa, and for us.

Obedient to Jewish tradition, she neither spoke nor attempted to comfort Solomon, allowing him opportunity to give fullest expression to his sorrow. Later, they would reminisce; it would comfort Sol and lend dignity to Papa.

She wiped away her tears; they would have to wait. The Freunds had taught her about life and, when Sol's grandparents passed away during the previous year, about the dignity of death. Her concern now must be for Sol's well-being.

She made a mental list of death rites. How inappropriate--and inconvenient, she thought, with a stab of guilt--that Jacob had died on the eve of one of Judaism's most joyous holidays, the Festival of the Harvest.

Tradition demanded that he be buried quickly, especially since tomorrow was Succot; the internment could not be on the first day of a festival. She would have to find a member of the sacred society organized by the Jewish community to take care of burials. Succot would pre-empt the traditional observance of
shiva
--the first week of mourning--and the month of mourning that usually followed, but she was not sure if it pre-empted the twelve Hebrew months of mourning for a parent, after which Sol would be forbidden to mourn overtly. She had to find food for the Meal of Comfort--bread, to differentiate the meal from a snack; an egg, to symbolize life's continuum--and food for tomorrow's Succot meal.

She remembered the year she and her family built a
succah
in the gardens at the estate. They erected the roof of the hut in the ancient way, with roots and plants, trying to make it as exposed and insecure as the huts the Jews had used during their forty years of wandering. Then they celebrated their trust in divine protection--Mama and Papa and her grandparents leading the family processional around the estate, branches of citron, palm, myrtle and willow held aloft to signify God's omnipresence. And now where was God! Hadn't He tested them enough?

She glanced across the street, and shivered. It had grown dark and the lamps were lit. The men who had done this could easily be waiting there, hiding in the darkness inside the apartment entrance.

Rites.
Concentrate on rites, not fears. Complete the respect and honor due all people, even the dead. If she could not acquire a white robe for Jacob's burial, she would see to it that he was properly covered with his
tallis.

She quietly repeated the prayer said upon taking leave of a mourner during
shiva:
May the Lord comfort you with all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Sol did not raise his head.

Somewhere, in some deep part of him, he would know where she had gone, that she had not deserted him--she thought, walking to the door of the shop. She had not sat
shiva
for Uncle Walther, her parents, or Oma; she was not raised that way. Some rites had made sense to her even then, like covering mirrors to avoid vanity and only reading books or chapters dealing with laws of mourning. Other rituals, though, had seemed irrelevant: bathing only for cleanliness, wearing the same clothes for a week. Having seen the comfort they took from ritual during their week of
shiva
for Sol's grandparents, she had begun to understand.

She reached for the door handle, but stepped back as a siren screamed--a sound as common to Berliners as the linden trees on the Avenue. A Mercedes with the familiar SS insignia painted on the door pulled up at the apartment building, and a tall SS man whose hair shone silver in the lamp light climbed from the car.

He stared at the shop, then turned toward the apartment building, where a Gestapo agent had appeared. The older man pointed at the shop. The younger nodded, returned to the car, and came away with a clipboard which held several sheets of paper. Judging by the way he ran his index finger down page after page, Miriam figured it was some kind of list. When he had flipped the last page over, the younger man nodded to his companion, and they both laughed. They waved as if at somebody in the apartments. Car doors slammed, and they drove away.

Miriam turned back into the shop. "Solomon," she said softly.

He looked up at her, his face stained with tears.

"I'm sorry, Sol. I wouldn't disturb you, but we have to go back." She knew not quite how--or how much--to tell him. "We have to go back into the sewer. They're still out there--the ones who..." She could not go on, despite the urgency.

"We have to take Papa with us." Sol stood up. "We can't leave him here."

"There's no time for that," Miriam said. "He would not want us to die for his body." She searched for the words that Solomon had taught her, the words that described the afterlife, where a man was judged and where his soul thrived. "He is in
Olam Haba."

The shop's cellar was too smoke-filled to allow them to descend that way, so after furtive glances up and down the street they returned to Kaverne. Like two small frightened children, they helped each other into the sewer. Please, let them not come looking for us, Miriam prayed as Sol closed the grate.

"There's no way to cover the grate, Miri." His voice was hoarse from weeping.

She nodded, though she knew he could not see her in the dark. When he sat down, she moved beside him and they held each other in silence until, finally, she could hear by his breathing that he had dozed off. Only then did she allow herself the luxury of more tears.

"Bruqah!"
Sol shouted.

Miriam awakened into blackness. Her skin felt clammy; her clothes clung to her, and the darkness felt like oil against her face. She shifted her weight and soothed Sol, hoping to stop his nightmares.

"What do you want of me!" He shoved himself from her arms.

"What do you want?" the sewer echoed. "You want..."

"It's Miriam! I'm here, Sol!"

He found her hand and held it fast. "Tell me it isn't true. Any of it."

"Oh God, how I wish I could!"

"Papa!" He began to weep anew.

When the tears subsided, he said, "The images, Miri. They're still here. A voice kept saying,
Bruqah
, and another asked me over and over, 'Do you hold your seasons dear, Solomon Freund? Is this your season of sadness?'"

Letting go of him, she stood up and groped through the dark, trying to get her bearings.

"Go away!" he cried out.

"Solomon?"

"Miriam?"

She heard him sigh in frustration, and she wondered, as she had before, if his fear of the visions was tainted by his longing for them. Lately, when he talked about his childhood visions, he had tried to convince her, and himself, that the horrors of the sewer had been foreknowledge of what Berlin and the Fatherland would become. They were a barrier, he said, against the insanity.

Tonight she could understand his inability to function, but there had been other times when things mystical seemed to call to him more loudly than his need for her. What must it be like, she thought, living with scenes and voices you could not share? She tried to imagine what Sol had described to her, images seen as if through the aperture of a camera, widening until they crystallized into visions of terror. Laughter mingling with the music-box melody of "Glowworm" as an apparition clarified and dissolved---

"I'll be...all right," he said.

When he said nothing else, she found she needed the reassurance of his voice as a buffer against a silence broken only by dripping water. "How long do you think we've been down here?" she asked him.

"Hours. Who knows. What's it matter, anyway."

The voice came from below her, and she realized he was still sitting down.

"You think they're still out there?" she asked. "They must go home to sleep sometime. I--"

She could hear his breathing, and she made her way back to him. When she touched him, he put his head against her legs, his arms embracing her at the knees. "We will fix up the shop, Miri. And this place. We'll be safe down here. We'll make it comfortable, you'll see--"

Her hands found his chin and she tilted his head back, bent and awkwardly kissed him. "I'm going to go, now," she told him. "Sleep while I'm gone. I'll find help for us--for Papa...."

There was no point in finishing her sentence. She would have to do this alone, though for a few moments she would need his help.

He boosted her, and she climbed from the sewer without much difficulty. She did not know exactly what it was she meant to do, only that something needed to be done. They could not hide forever. The apartment was out of bounds until they were certain the men had found some other form of entertainment, she thought grimly. Burying Jacob was out of the question until a member of the sacred society was found or until Sol had calmed down enough to make rational decisions. But...something.

She entered the shop and made her way to the door, averting her eyes to avoid seeing Jacob's body.

The street, swept with driving rain, was deserted. She cursed the bell that jangled as she opened the door and shivered as a blast of rain and night air hit her. Leaving the door ajar, she went back inside to get her coat and the old boa she had taken to the shop in the hopes of selling it. Ever since she had lost her job at Ananas, she had looked at her few possessions as nothing more than eggs and milk and bread. Things had been better during the Games, but she had harbored no illusions about their remaining that way.

There was only one way they could hope to survive for the long term. They had to leave Germany. Any idea of staying and trying to put the shop to rights was crazy--but leaving required papers, or excellent forgeries.

She went out into the rain, walking fast but in no particular direction, not slowing even as she passed Ananas. The club's new owners had corrected the place's so-called abuses. Symbolic of peace and prosperity, an eagle clutching a swastika medallion in its claws blazed from the marquee like a beacon. Everything about it promised sanctuary--though not for her. Nowadays the place was almost always filled with military revelry.

The door opened and two men came out. One wore the uniform of the Abwehr. For a moment she thought it was Erich, though she knew he never frequented the club anymore. Chilled to the bone, she stepped into the street, silently acknowledging where it was her feet were taking her: to see the Rittmeister.

He was the only one who could help them. He could find a way to call off the SS, a way to bury Jacob Freund, a way to get them out of the country. Or at least the necessary papers. Or--

Angry at her desperation, she strode toward his apartment. He would have to help them! What choice did he have, after his father robbed them blind? He too had loved Jacob Freund, in whatever way he was capable of loving. Surely he could not refuse!

But he could, and she knew it.

After the Olympics, he had legally divested himself of his former surname, due to its association with the Jewish shop.
Erich Alois
he called himself now. If he could do that, she thought, he could certainly refuse to take any responsibility for their safety.