Child of the Light (43 page)

She was across the street from the building where Erich lived when she realized she would be unable to go inside after all. Anything was better than accepting help from Erich or, worse, having him refuse to help them.

Twenty meters away through the fog and drizzle, a rotund, heavy-jowled man wearing a fur-collared overcoat and carrying a walking stick had stopped beneath a street lamp and was staring toward her. Someone she knew? She squinted in his direction.

"Wie viel!"
he called out. "How much?"

She smiled somberly. Must look quite a sight, she thought--the boa bedraggled, hair rain-soaked and plastered to her head. Small wonder he thought her a prostitute!

He rapidly approached. "Let's not waste time!" His accent clearly pegged him as British. "Answer me! I asked you how much!"

Impatience had turned his tone ugly.

"Sorry,
Schatzie,"
Miriam said. "I'm through for the night."

"Not good enough for you?" Putting down the tip of his walking stick to balance himself, he stepped across the water accumulating in the gutter and grabbed hold of her arm.

"Get away!" She tried to shake off his hand, but he tightened his grip.

"Look at you! Why would anyone pay good money for such a tramp! You should pay
me
to take you home."

He shoved her aside. Caught off-balance she stumbled and with a cry fell into the street. She huddled there, head down, sobbing softly and uncaring that she was forming a dam in the drainage.

The man laughed and reached down with his walking stick as if to help her lift herself. "Come on. I'll scrub you down and you can service me while I dine."

Miriam batted away the stick, climbed from the gutter with the dignity of a dancer recovering from a fall during a performance, and unsteadily gained her feet. Throwing the boa over her shoulder, she started across the street. The heel of her left shoe had been loosened by the fall and she walked awkwardly, but she held her head high and her face was set like stone against the slanting rain.

"A filet of sole for a superior performance."

"I would rather starve."

The man shook his stick. "Come back, or I'll report you to the Gestapo for soliciting! I know you're a Jew! I can smell it."

Miriam quickened her pace. It was enough to cause her heel, already weakened, to collapse. Even her dancer's training did not enable her to stay upright.

She hit the sidewalk clumsily, in a sprawl. She heard the man laugh as she drew herself up with her arms and unsteadily climbed to her feet. She bent over, balancing precariously on one foot as she tried to remove the broken shoe.

"I saw you from my window." Erich stepped into the light and reached to take hold of her shoulders before she toppled again.

She stepped away from him, nearly going down again in the process.

"That little otter's mine by first right, soldier." The man in the overcoat ambled toward them. "Go back to your flat. If you want to fuck her you'll have to wait your turn."

Erich stepped back, poised on the balls of his feet, eyeing the man coldly.

"Anyone can see she's Jewish." The man looked startled by Erich's officer insignia. "First come, first--"

"She doesn't have a trace of Jewish blood in her."

"Oh? Friend of yours, Herr Rittmeister? I'd be more careful of the company I keep if I were you."

"That's enough." Erich's voice was dangerously low.

"Whatever you say, Rittmeister. You want to tarnish your soul by protecting a Jewish whore, that's your business."

Without warning, Erich's foot snapped up. The Britain tried to block with his walking stick, but did not get it horizontal fast enough. The kick struck his abdomen, and the man's eyes bulged. He stared at Erich as though attempting to hold his breath, then bent over, clutching his midriff. Air issued through his lips. Erich hit him in the face with his fist. His ring, with its curled metal center, gouged the man's cheek, and he toppled.

How she'd like to place the stick across that fat neck and strangle the swine, she thought. Strangle them both! "You're quite the gentleman," she said angrily, furious at herself and the whole situation.

"I'll kill him if you want."

"Don't be an ass." She finally got her left shoe off, stepped over the fallen man and clumped through the puddles, hurrying away from Erich.

He caught up as she rounded the corner onto Mauerstrasse. "I don't know what you think you're doing wandering around the streets in the middle of the night," he said, taking her arm. "You'd better come with me before someone worse finds you."

She shook him off. "Leave me alone."

"You may be sure that man will go to the authorities. You'll be detained before you ever reach--"

"I couldn't care less."

"Don't be a fool, Miriam!"

Wheeling, she faced him. "What would you have me do? Register a complaint with the police? Go with you, perhaps even to the home you and your Nazi cronies stole from me?" Clasping her hands as though in prayer, she gazed into his eyes with the over-acted, maudlin look that until recently had so characterized romantic films. "Shall we summon a carriage and a team of four to whisk us away to your estate, my love? Maybe while we're there His Highness Gauleiter Goebbels will set our lives aright. Think that if I fuck him, he will give me back what has been stolen from us, or grant me clemency from hunger? Maybe he can do better than that. Maybe he or His Holiness Adolph Hitler can raise Jacob Freund from the dead!"

She broke into sobs.

"Jacob? What about Jacob! Dead?"

She nodded, and the world began to swim. Trying to keep from blacking out, she did not resist when he put an arm across her shoulders. He guided her into the building.

In the smoky Bierstube on the ground floor a trombone was blowing
oom-pah-pah
and people were laughing and clinking glasses. She forced herself up two steep stair flights, Erich holding her to keep her from collapsing. On the third-floor landing he pulled her to face him, clutching her hands with his, against his chest. "What's this about Jacob!"

"They...they hanged him. Oh, God." She felt dizzy again. "Brownshirts broke into the shop and...your parents...I need to lie down."

"My parents! They were attacked
again
?"

"They got away. Got away with--"

"Thank God for that." He inserted the key, kicked open the door, and maneuvered her inside. "And Solomon? Is he okay?"

"What do you care about Solomon!"

Erich helped her onto the bed and, pulling a blanket across her feet, looked at her quizzically. He appeared stunned, and she wondered if he were focused on an issue he had hoped never to have to examine too thoroughly. Then slowly he appeared to regain the control that she knew was as essential to him as breath itself. He finished covering her legs with the blanket, and leaned over her.

"Solomon," he said huskily, "is my brother."

She sensed it was the truth. At least for the moment.

She's beautiful, Erich thought. Even drenched, she's beautiful.

Miriam held out her hands as if to stop the world from spinning, exhaled audibly and sat up, blinking. She rubbed her eyes and, shaking her head ruefully, put her hands over her face as if to shield herself from grief.

Gently Erich lifted her hands aside. Her eyes were downcast and her face looked haggard. "Dry your hair." He handed her a towel. "You'll feel better."

She sat with the towel against her left cheek, slowly rocking.

"The man outside. Did he hurt you?"

She shook her head. "Only my pride. At least, what's left of my pride." Her trembling increased. Tears rolled down her cheeks. He lifted the wet boa from her shoulders and threw it in the sink, thinking fleetingly that it looked like a drowned cat. Then he pulled up a chair and sat on it, backwards, facing her.

"I knew it would come to this!" He made a fist.

"There was an officer with a list. An SS officer."

"Silver-haired?"

She nodded disconsolately.

"That
bastard!"
He punched the air.

"There is more." From the strain in her face he knew she was on the verge of hysteria. He patted her wrist to calm her, but she jerked away. She took a deep breath. "Late this afternoon, Sol went out for a walk. I was at home. Your parents were minding the shop. Around sundown, Herr Freund and I went across the street to the shop and--and--"

He tilted the chair forward. "Tell me!"

She lifted the towel and began rubbing vigorously, wrathfully, at her hair, her features seized with anger. "Everything had been cleaned out...everything! Is that what you need to hear, Erich Alois? Your parents cleaned out the safe! They took every last pfennig and as many accouterments as they could!"

"Surely there's some mistake...."

Feeling suddenly, strangely empty, he tipped back in the chair.

His parents were imperfect, yes, but...
thieves?
Had all moral values been signed away with the 1918 Armistice? Betrayal, the Führer taught, was the province of Red revolutionaries, republicans...and Jews.

Especially the Jews.

His parents had stabbed the Freunds in the back; in time, they too would find some way to blame their misconduct on the Jews.

"Herr Freund made us hide in the sewer." Miriam's words were tumbling out now, and she was crying. "They destroyed the shop and...and strung him up in his own shop like a criminal, Erich...strangled him with his Iron Cross--"

She broke into convulsive sobs. He wanted to comfort her, but instead and backed away as if from something too hideous to contemplate. He felt as though he, personally, had killed Jacob Freund by provoking Otto Hempel's hatred and by being a part of the larger organization that condoned and encouraged such acts. A murderer, he thought, had no business giving solace to the orphans he had created. And then there were his parents.

"We
have
to get out of Germany," she said. Her voice had taken on a new urgency. "You're the only one who can help us, Erich...."

Angry and frustrated that all his dreaming about her had come to this, he walked to the balcony window and stared at the city's fog-blurred lights. Yes, he had to get them out, but how? Even if he could secure papers for them, getting them out of Germany wasn't enough. Right now there were neutral countries, but for how long?

Ultimately, Adolph Hitler would lay claim to them all.

"I'm deeply sorry, Miriam," he said softly. "Herr Freund was a good man. I wish---" He was about to say he wished his own father had been as moral. "He was...special. I promise I'll find a way to help you, but it's not going to be easy. I have to think about it...find a way, a safe way."

"But you will try to help?"

"As God is my witness. Whatever you need, I'll get. Papers, petitions, money. Whatever it takes. I'm no longer powerless in the Party," he assured her in a choked voice. "There is much I can do behind the scenes. I want to keep you safe."

She looked up at him. "If you're serious, why have you stood by for so long?" she asked between sobs. Her eyes revealed her need to accept his offer, no matter how much she mistrusted him.

He knelt beside her, elbows on the chair, and looked at her closely. "I don't blame you for the way you feel." When he reached out and touched her cheek, he saw her steel herself, but she did not draw away.

Exhausted, her face tear-stained, she still looked beautiful; only an enormous effort of will stopped him from trying to kiss her. Was Solomon, he wondered, similarly enslaved?

"You'll catch pneumonia if you stay in those wet things," he said, standing. He lifted off his desk top and set it against the wall; where the desk had been was a gold-rimmed porcelain bathtub. "You'll feel better after a bath and some food."

"I have to get back to Sol...."

"Solomon can take care of himself. You need to take care of
yourself
for a change. Please--while I think this through."

"I must get back." She no longer sounded defiant. "Herr Freund's body. What are we going to do with the--"

"Just rest. You'll be able to think better after you've had some sleep. I'll get you some food from downstairs. Sol will be all right for now. And he'll be a lot more all right if I can work things out."

He put a large kettle on each of the narrow stove's two burners. After placing a silk shirt and one of his robes on the bed, he gave her the most reassuring smile he could muster and headed down to the Bierstube.

Think! he told himself as he descended the stairs. There had to be some service he could render in exchange for the safety of his friends. Would he ever be rid of Hempel and his need for vengeance? Hempel was no fool; he knew just where and when to inflict pain, as if he had a talent for looking into the soul of his enemy. It was not happenstance that the mob had stormed down Friedrich Ebert Strasse. Brownshirt violence was seemingly random only in the particulars. Hempel, he was sure, had chosen the area carefully.