Child of the Journey (17 page)

Thank God, he thought, bursting into the shop. "Fräulein Miriam," he said. "Help me. Please. You must hide me in the sewer with Herr Freu--"

Hands gripped him from behind and turned him around. He had not noticed the two men sitting at the table in the corner, a miniature Christmas tree and two brandy snifters between them on the table. The one leaning forward to hold him looked like an older version of the uniformed man with whom Fräulein Miriam had breakfasted that morning at the Kempinski Café; the other wore the uniform of the men who had chased him down the alley. Misha stared at his hair, which shone as brightly silver as the tinsel on the miniature tree.

"So that's where he is," the man who held him said. "I might have known."

"What a charming looking youth," the silver-haired man said, smiling. He motioned for the older man to release the boy and, taking hold of Misha's wrist with one hand, tussled Misha's hair. "And how fortuitous that he should bring us this information. I will leave you to take care of him for me, Friedrich, while we take care of our morning business."

Misha struggled against the grip of the man who held him.

"Don't be afraid," the silver-haired soldier said. "We're here to help."

"He is a handful," the other man said.

Misha craned his neck to look outside and prayed desperately that he would see Fräulein Miriam headed toward the shop. His view was blocked by the ugly, no-neck man, who was leaning casually against the plate-glass storefront, smoking a fat cigar.

He stopped struggling.

T
hirst. The faucet in the sub-basement beckoned like a mirage. He lay on the crating, lost in vertigo, suffocating in the stench, listening to his own panting. The darkness wheezed with each breath. His mouth worked spasmodically, like that of a sleeping infant searching for the breast. Sometimes he ran a hand along the slick wall so contact with physical reality outside himself would tell him he was still alive. His muscles, lacking water, ached; his scalp itched with lice or fleas. He had clawed, scratched, torn at his clothes, but the insects continued feasting.

Finally he crawled from the drain to the antique sinks in the sub-basement corner beneath the stairs. One of the tap handles had rusted off; the other, though loose, was intact. He used a packing-crate endboard for a pry bar. The handle turned, protesting and squealing. Belching, groaning, the tap dribbled--then gushed.

The water, rusty, burned his parched throat. He retched, spat, cursed the plumbing as he let the tap run, then cupped his hands and slurped. The metallic taste was still present. Though he knew what drinking rust might cause, he filled his canteen and tried shutting off the tap. The handle spun loosely in its collar.

Putting a thumbnail in the headscrew to secure it, he pressed down on the handle. A major victory--the only casualty one-half of a thumbnail. Now the tap fizzed like weak soda water.

For a moment he felt like sneaking up the stairs and peering under the cabaret door as he had as a child, when he had first seen Miriam--the featured performer at a private party her grandmother had thrown in the cabaret--but common sense won out, and he lowered himself back into the drain.

He slept fitfully and awoke feverish, his guts gripped by a steel hand. He drew up his legs and pushed his fists against his stomach, praying that the cramps would leave him.

Warm wetness suddenly flowed between his thighs. Diarrhea. He might as well have filled the canteen with seawater.

He picked himself up, his movements jerky, uncoordinated, a marionette with an unskilled master. What transcendence, he wondered bitterly, did the Kabbalah prescribe for lifting body rather than soul? How fortunate the composer who'd spent his life creating music in honor of Judaism, only to be killed by a Torah scroll which fell from its cabinet and struck him on the head. That seemed fitting for a scholar; rotting and dying in a sewer did not.

He boosted himself onto the plank, lay dizzied and panting, then groped for the seabag. At the bottom were two crackers. He put one in his mouth, chewed, massaged his throat to get it down. Like force-feeding a reptile, he thought angrily.

Faces shimmered in the blackness. *His father, in the rocker, floating above Friedrich Ebert Strasse by holding himself up by the Iron Cross ribbon around his neck. Then appeared Mutti and Recha, waving good-bye as a train streamed beyond the end of its tracks and sank with a hiss into the North Sea. Miriam, eyes smiling as she fellated Erich, who leaned nonchalantly against a tree, a German shepherd beside him on a choke chain.

Rathenau. Shattered bone and flesh blackened by powder burns, a Reichsbanner handkerchief pinned to his cheek.

Stop!
Sol reached to squeeze the apparition into nothingness. Pinwheels of light exploded inside his head. Above him, boot heels clattered on concrete. He seized Rathenau by the throat.
 

And lost his balance. Clutched the plank, upside-down like a sloth, he fell with a splash.

He tried to climb from the seepage, but his hands slid down the wet wall and he toppled backward. When he arose, sputtering, he heard a hinge squeal. Light lanced into the blackness. He raised his hands to shield his eyes, begging a vision to come erase the nightmare of whatever new reality had invaded his awful domain.

"You are right, Herr Weisser," someone said in a northern dialect. "There
is
a Jew in here--and he stinks like a pig!"

Sol pawed at the light.

"Merry Christmas, Jew," the man continued in
Plattdeutsch.
"Climb from your sty!"

Delirium followed. He felt himself crawl onto the board and was yanked by the arms through the drain, then sent hurtling up the stairs. He staggered into the cabaret and collapsed. Someone said, "Jew football!" and kicked him in the ribs
.
He lay weeping on the floor. Before him lay shards of a wineglass, like the one he had crushed underfoot at the end of his and Miriam's marriage ceremony. He took hold of a shard, gripping it so tightly that it dug into his palm. Through his fog of pain and humiliation, he saw blood rise between his fingers. The sight of it brought a peculiar sense of relief: the pain felt sharp and clear.
Clean.
Self-inflicted, and returning to him a bit of dignity he had thought gone forever.

The fog lifted from his eyes.

"What day is it?" he gasped. "What date?"

"Stinking Jew doesn't even know when Christmas is celebrated!"

Again he was kicked. He doubled over in agony.
So many days in the sewer. Weeks.
The darkness had worked its black magic on his senses all too well.

He looked up, saw Miriam's shawl draped around an autographed picture of Hitler.

"Herr Freund?"

A child in a ratty coat entered Sol's sight. Where had he seen the boy before? When?
  

Blood trickled from the boy's nose. He was crying quietly. "I'm sorry, Herr Freund," he whispered. "I didn't mean to-- Those people in the tobacco shop...I thought they were your friends. I thought they would hide me down
there
again."

"Whatever happened, it's all right," Sol whispered back as he struggled to stand. A soldier shoved him with a rifle and he went pitching up the metal stairs, but he reached back and took the boy by the hand before he stepped out of Kaverne and into the street.

I
f I don't get out of the car right now, I'll be sick.
 

Miriam tapped Konnie on the shoulder. "Let me off.
Here.
I'll walk the rest of the way to the shop."

By the set of his back, Miriam knew he disapproved. That made two disapproving males in the last hour; Erich had insisted she did not look well and should stay home.

Climbing from the car, she pulled her coat closed against the biting cold. Sick, all right; but not from the weather. Sick with worry. Sol--down there two weeks, with too little food and drink.

Not that she had good news for him. Perón was apparently not in Germany. Last Sunday, she had tried to get down to the cellar, but the shop was never emptied of its beer-happy customers popping in from Kaverne. With the shop that busy, the Weissers had not gone to Mass. They had watched her every move, calling her back if she were out of sight even for seconds.

Today would be equally busy, but it was Christmas. Surely the Weissers would go to Mass. It was only a matter of time until some soldier wandered down to the sub-basement, perhaps to sleep off a drunk, saw a candle within the sewer or heard a noise. Someone coughing. The shuffling of feet.

She quickened her pace.

"Merry Christmas!" a barrel-organ man called to her.

"Merry Christmas." She slowed down and dug for a coin to deposit in his hat. On impulse, she said, "Come to the shop later. I'll find you a good cigar."

He grinned and ground out the beginning notes of
"O Tannenbaum."
She walked on, head lowered against the wind.

From a block away a siren blasted, drowning out the carol.

She looked up.

Konrad, disobeying her instructions to go home to his family and spend Christmas Day with them, had parked the touring-car up against the curb in front of the shop. He seemed to be signaling her to stay back.

She stepped into the shelter of a doorway and waited as a car with SS insignia pulled up in front of Kaverne and three men got out. Two of them, rifles in hand, hurried down the cabaret steps. The third loitered at the sidewalk. She recognized him from the estate. She frowned, puzzled.

Hadn't Erich said that Otto Hempel was now deputy commandant of the Sachsenhausen detention center? Had he flown that little plane of his back to Berlin to personally oversee an arrest?

Oh my God,
she thought. Sol. Flattening herself against the wall, she pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle a scream. Friedrich Weisser burst from the shop, dragging Misha by the hand. He and Hempel exchanged looks. He prodded Misha toward the steps, and the three of them disappeared.

Frozen with fear and cold and nausea, she watched as a silent column of men, women and children, flanked by guards with shepherds, rounded the far corner.

She had seen such lines before--emerging from side streets and alleys--guards and shepherds herding them along the avenue. Quiet Jews. Heads down. Men carrying satchels; women with babies bundled in lovingly crocheted shawls and patchwork blankets, as if El Greco, ordered to paint a tragedy in somber hues, had carelessly splashed his canvas with bright colors. They moved with the steady step of people headed for a train they knew would not leave without them. Some had children tagging along like exiles from a classroom. Others were murmuring thanks to God for giving them the foresight to have put their sons and daughters on the special trains to Amsterdam and Zurich.

When the column stopped in front of Kaverne, not a person moved. No one murmured, or looked toward the cabaret.
They know why they're stopping,
she thought desperately.
They've seen it too many times.
They were in a funeral march, mourning themselves.

Moments later Sol and Misha stumbled up the steps that led down to Kaverne and sprawled headlong into the street.
 
Misha stood up first and stooped to help Sol. A guard shoved the boy aside and ordered the column to move on.
 

Miriam bit into her gloved hand as Sol staggered to his feet. The child looked terrified. Sol, painfully thin and apparently more humiliated than frightened, seemed to be concentrating on the physical act of walking.

Keeping a fair distance behind them, Miriam followed. Once in a while, a face appeared at a window, pulling aside a lace curtain to stare out. On every corner, Nazi flags snapped in the breeze. The snow had stopped and, as the procession passed the first corner of the Tiergarten, the sun filtered through the clouds. Passers-by standing among dried and dead shrubs stopped to stare.

The column reached the Zoo Station and paused beneath the huge clock, its horn-blowing cherubs decorated with holly.

At the far side of the station, a dirty steam engine stood in front of three boxcars and a caboose. The train had apparently been conscripted from a tourist run; wilted streamers and deflated balloons dangled from the cab.

The guards released the pins of the boxcar locks and pushed the doors open with a clang. "Get in!" One motioned with his carbine.

No one moved.

"In!"

A heavy-set woman with a baby in her arms approached a guard cradling a submachine gun. The shepherd heeled beside him rose. Growling. Hackles raised. The woman detoured around the dog, unknotted her scarf and shook out her curly hair, as though doing so would improve her looks and her bargaining power. "They have made a mistake. I have done nothing."

The man gave her a fatherly smile. "You're not a Jew, eh? Just born to the wrong parents?"

"I've done nothing," she repeated.

His smile broadened. "If you've done nothing, you're a non-contributor to the State and should be eliminated."

"I don't mean I've done
nothing.
I mean I've done nothing wrong." She uncovered the infant's head. "Nor has my little one."