Child of the Light (44 page)

It would happen again. Unless he could get them out.

Why such emphasis on eradicating the Jews! he thought bitterly. They weren't responsible for what ailed the world, though some facts
were
irrefutable. Only one in a hundred Germans and one in five Berliners was Jewish, yet they dominated the giant Darmstädter, Deutche, and Dresdener banks; owned such huge department stores as Wertheim, Tietz, and KadeWe; and controlled the largest newspaper groups, Ullstein and Mosse. The question was not whether the Jews had power, but whether they wielded power for the good of the Reich.

In his opinion they had. People like Jacob Freud were proof of that. Until Adolph Hitler had insisted otherwise.

I too might have marched to the drum of the Party propaganda, had Pfaueninsel not happened. So perhaps Achilles did not die in vain.

Before entering the Bierstube, he took a deep breath to compose himself, and straightened his uniform.

He returned with a metwurst, a loaf of pumpernickel, a couple of cheeses including a small brie, a bottle of burgundy--hardly the meal he had envisioned serving Miriam the first time she came to his flat, he thought angrily. He found her sleeping, her hair turbaned, more towels on the floor, her shoulders bare and beautiful. No wonder, he thought, unable to stifle a sentimental smile, Lady Venus so easily entrapped Tannhäuser in her web of desire.

Removing his clothes, he slipped into the tub. Perhaps, like Napoleon, he could best contemplate conquests in the bath. What looked like one of her pubic hairs floated in the water. He wound it around his finger and, settling back, watched the lights of a barge moving along Landwehr Kanal, its filthy water a dumping place for refuse--and bodies; during the aborted Bolshevik Revolution, the Freikorps had dumped Rosa Luxemburg there after bludgeoning her to death. Four months in the canal before being found.

That was 19l8. The same year he and Solomon found the sewer.

Poor
Spatz.
So naïve, so sure the world was rooted in good and not evil. He himself had known better, even then. They'd been born too late for the war--the real war--the one against moral decline. How he longed, even now, for the imperial purity of the Kaiserzeit, the pre-war Old Order. Peace, and respect for traditional values.

Chivalry and the Kaiserzeit had died the moment the Armistice went into effect, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year the Freikorps quelled a revolution and Friedrich Weisser drowned a terrier pup named Bull.

"I've got it!"

He sat up and with a perplexed cry, Miriam jolted upright in bed, the robe clutched against her throat. Smiling at his creativity, he stepped from the tub and wrapped a towel around his waist. How clever, he told himself as he sat down at the table, grinning at her; use that asset which made it so dangerous for her to stay in the Fatherland.

Her name. Her legacy from one of the last of the Old Order.

"I can get you out. Both of you."

"You're certain?"

He nodded. "I
will
help you...and Solomon."

"I know." She was trying to be patient, but he sensed her growing agitation.

"Getting you out of Germany is not enough. You must leave Europe. There's a South American here in Berlin." He hesitated, then decided there was no harm in mentioning the name. "An emissary to Italy--Perón's his name. He'll help. I'm sure he will."

"Juan Perón? I've known him for years. He was a friend of Uncle Walther's. They really liked each other."

"Well, he certainly seems to like you," Erich said, watching her face. Her tension seemed to have lessened. Apparently, he had managed to say the right thing. He wondered, with a pique of jealousy, about the wisdom of having thought of the Argentinean, feeling a vague unease about her exact relationship with the man. "Perón saw you dance at Pfaueninsel. He was enchanted. If he made an official request to have you perform in his country, Hitler would not refuse. But it will take time--"

"Sol must leave now!" Her voice was edged with panic. "He's cracking up, Erich. If he stays any longer, that sewer could become his tomb--if we're not arrested first."

"Then there's only one answer. Solomon must go to Amsterdam right away and join you in South America later. He's not the problem, you are. Papers for him shouldn't be impossible to arrange--I don't think he's on any list of known enemies of the Party--"

"He's a Jew!" she said bitterly.

"It can be done, Miri. But you're Walther Rathenau's niece--"

"Are you saying I'm on some kind of special list?"

"I don't know, but it's more than likely. Anyhow, the problem's more complicated than that." He looked at her seriously. "What I'm saying is that it will take time to make the arrangements for you. I must be careful, if I am to stay alive myself."

"And in the meantime?"

"In the meantime," he said, "Solomon leaves and you stay with me."

She laughed mirthlessly. "I see. I'm beginning to understand. You've dropped the name
Weisser
, now all you have to do is get rid of Solomon--"

"Stop it!"

"No,
you
stop! If you think I'm coming to live at the estate with you--"

He put a hand on her arm. "You couldn't, even if you...if I wanted you to. Not without renouncing your faith. But you can stay here safely, at least for a while. Fortunately, the landlady doesn't care who lives here, she just cares about the rent money. That way I'll look after you--but only as much as you want me to."

After a moment's silence Miriam nodded in acquiescence. "Thank you, Erich," she said simply. "Now I really must go."

"Stay in bed," Erich said gruffly. "You need to rest. I'll go and find Solomon."

"No." She rose from the bed and scooped up her clothes.
"I
have to go to him. Tell him myself."

"All right, then. But be ready for me when I come."

"When, Erich? I must know--"

"I told you, I don't know. Today, tomorrow, next week."

He thought for a moment. What he really wanted to say what that he didn't know the answer to that
either,
but as his mind began to reel, he realized he
could
do it. With luck, in a few hours. At least set the thing in motion.

"Tonight," he said definitively. "I'll send Konrad with the limousine. He can take Solomon to the train station and bring you here."

"Konrad," she said softly. The expression on her face told him that she was thinking of the other time Konrad drove her to the station, with Solomon in tow, only that time she was the one leaving, for Paris. "Won't that draw too much attention to us?"

"I don't think so," Erich said, his mind continuing to spin out the scenario and its possibilities. "Once you are living in my flat, it will be assumed that you are my mistress. Making a show of bringing you here at the same time as sending Solomon away will make sense to the Party. They know of your...friendship...with Solomon. My participation in both actions will be understood."

"If you say so," she said quietly. "I have no choice but to trust your judgment. It seems to me, however, that understanding does not necessarily constitute approval. I imagine they would be more likely to approve if you disposed of Sol is some other, less kindly way. Not so?"

"Not so," Erich said. But Miriam's question penetrated to the darkest regions of his soul. To keep from looking her directly in the eye, he turned to stare out of the window. He saw the lights of another barge moving through the fog. Probably carrying coal, he reflected, and more than likely headed for the Krupp furnaces. The munitions factories were working at full capacity. War was inevitable, people said, though surely not in
this
decade.

Well, let it come--whenever; he had his own war to wage.

He listened to the sounds from the bathroom, where Miriam was dressing to leave. Someday, somehow, he swore, he would have Adolph Hitler's head on a pike.

And Miriam Rathenau permanently in his bed.

----a sea, blue-black as ink.
On a cliff, silhouetted against the ocean, is a tall man whose hair is the color of foam. A second man squats in the grass, his dark skin deeply pockmarked.

The tall man has one end of a leather strap wound around his wrist; the other end is attached to a boy who crouches at the man's feet like a dog. His back is covered with the furry skin of an animal, and he wears a collar around his neck.

The man who is standing signals for quiet. The boy quivers visibly, shoulders tensed and face set in a fury as he strains against the leash. Kneeling, the tall man puts a hand on the boy's furry back and unhooks the leash clip from the collar.

Solomon! the boy cries. Bruqah!...Miriam!...Solomon! For God's sake, somebody help me!----

"Somebody help me," Sol mumbled as the vision dissipated and he awoke into the blackness of the sewer. His skin and clothes were soaked with the sweat and smell of terror, and the darkness around him pressed in on him like a live body.

He rolled over on the makeshift flooring and slid his hands up the slimy walls, struggling to stand. Papa! He must go upstairs and pray for Papa, and for himself; he must pray for Miri, and Recha, and Mama. In the darkness he found his old book bag, still hanging from the two-by-twelve after so many years. He hugged it to his chest as he rocked on his heels, crying----

----the sea roars like a beast in heat as the boy bounds forward toward a corpse that hangs from the branch of a huge palm tree. Above its head, a simian creature points a long finger.

Mihinana!
the white-haired man commands, swacking the boy on the butt. Eat!---

Sol leaned forward, as if seeing more clearly would bring understanding, but the knot in his stomach simply tightened and the fog that clouded his mind thickened----

----the boy responds to the whip.
First on all fours, then on his feet, now flying through the air as he grips the corpse like a gibbon, legs hugging the waist. He swings upside-down with the body, sinking his teeth into the hip and shaking his head wildly as he fights to tear off a chunk of flesh. His eyes are wide open. Blood curls down his chin.

A guttural voice rings through the darkness:
"There is nowhere to run, Solomon Freund. Watch. Enjoy. As you hold your seasons dear, so you have no choice"---

"What do you want of me!"

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

A light from above erupted against Sol's face, and he jerked up his arms defensively.

"Go away." His voice was a rasp.

A whisper: Is this your season of madness?

"Yes!" Sold shouted at the twilight voice of his childhood. "Yes, I am mad. MAD!"

"Solomon, are you all right?"

"Miriam?"

Leaning down, she shone a flashlight around the sewer--like a mother assuring herself there was no tangible cause for her child's nightmare, Sol thought bitterly.

He let go of the book bag, as ashamed of the pleasure it had once brought him as he was of Miriam seeing him like this, and squinting upward, trying to focus. Her face floated behind the light. "I'm fine, I...what time is it?"

"Six o'clock."

"In the morning?"

"Yes." She sounded defensive, as if his question contained an accusation. In a way it had. He needed to know where she had been--and with whom.

"Papa!" he said, remembering. Papa was dead, his body lying in the shop--and he was concerned about where Miriam had been! How long would it take before he fully comprehended Papa's death? A week--a month--a year? And at what cost to his sanity?

What is the price of five sparrows, Solomon?

The voice came to him out of the sewer, as it had done so many years before.

"Eat," he heard again, but this time it was real. "You must come out of there." Miriam reached down as if to pull him out. "I have brought bread, and here's a hard-boiled egg."

"I'm going to Papa." He took hold of her hand and climbed into the sub-basement.

"Papa would wish you to keep up your strength." She had spread out a newspaper on the floor of the sub-basement and laid it out like a tablecloth. On top of it, she had placed a metwurst, half a loaf of pumpernickel, a small brie, a half-empty bottle of burgundy.

From her pocket she took a precious egg wrapped in a face-cloth. He took the egg from her, broke it in two, and handed her back on half. "This food," he said. "Where did you get it?"

"Eat," she said. "When you are finished we have urgent things to talk about."

In deference to the pain in Miriam's eyes he broke off a small crust of bread and ate it with the egg. "God willing," he said, "whatever we must discuss can wait until sundown. For this one day, I will mourn for my father."

"And I will leave you to mourn in solitude," Miriam said. "But if I must interrupt...if I call out to you to come at once, do as I say."

When Sol did not answer, Miriam became insistent. "Promise me, Solomon," she said.

The urgency in her voice transferred itself to him through his pain. "I will," he said, nodding at her. "Now I must go to Papa."