The Butterfly Plague (13 page)

I swam by day and by night.

I wanted to obey. I wanted to be obedient. I wanted to love and be loved. I wanted my husband. I did not know what had become of him. He seemed to be living in another world, and I tried with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul to join him there. I tried with all my body. I loved him.

Acts of Absolution and Atonement.

My ankles swelled. As though nails had been driven far up through my feet.

And wherever we went there were my rows of dreamers. Only now they did not walk. Now they sat on benches, or they stood by walls. They were always in the shadows. Always silent.

I received gifts. A gold watch from Himmler—a box at the opera from the Fuhrer—kid gloves and a leather bag from Julius Streicher—a compact from Goering—and a pill box. And flowers from Dr. Goebbels (he called them messages of admiration). Their wives and mistresses ignored me. I was denied the company of women. I began to hoard more and more the memories of home. My real home. America.

Last spring—1938, either in May or very early in June (I don’t remember)—I was taken to give a demonstration. It was to be my last demonstration.

We traveled at first by train and then by car. We were accompanied by several officers and by three men from the Ministry of Enlightenment and Information. On the train they all read books (one, I remember, was reading
Vom Winde Verweht
) and no one spoke. Bruno looked out of the window, and as I watched his profile, I tried to reconcile this man with the man I had wanted so badly to marry two years before.

I’m not telling you everything, of course. A lot of it was private. But I can say that we had our moments of bliss and our moments of hell. That is, inside the private part of our marriage. There was the usual state of war which everyone has. But Bruno, for all his outward demeanor of leadership and strength, still had his “boy” moments. And during them, life was marvelous. He liked to be touched and to have the back of his head scratched and he could be an inventive, wonderful lover when he thought of me and himself and forgot what else was on his mind. In other words, what I am saying is that he remained human to me, as my husband. But as someone I lived with and knew and had once gone so far as to worship blindly, I could not see that I any longer recognized him.

Our journey seemed to be a long one, but it took only from after breakfast to after lunch. At the station, wherever we were, a motorcade was waiting for us, and as we got into the cars, I heard several times the word “
Kamp
.” Also the word, “
Kamp-Kommandant
” Also the phrase, “
Es gibt keine Kamp-Krankenhaus
.”

I was almost amused by this. Any form of fetish amuses me, and I remember thinking, “
Kamp
” is their new word. Their fetish. Just as, for a long while, the word had been “
Freude
.” There had been Joy Houses and Joy Festivals and Joy Organizations. There had been Joy Commanders. Now it was camp. I wondered what they meant when they said there was no hospital. However, it did not occur to me for one minute it had anything to do with me.

We drove along pleasant roads. We passed through villages and towns, and in them people waved. A troop of Jungenvolk halted to let us pass and they waved and shouted and heiled at the autocade. They loved our flags and they loved our uniforms and they loved the shape and size of our motorcars. They loved the fact that we had imposed upon them, disturbed their marching and their labors.

We arrived.

I was not really watching. I was tired. We passed through a woods. I was aware of that. It got dark. When we broke from the other side I was aware only of the cleared terrain and of young men singing as they cut down more trees.

There was a sort of stockade. And there was wire fencing. Very high. And my first thought was: animals. All of this had something to do with animals. We had made this journey, come all this way, to see a zoo.

And then I thought, It must be a strangely special zoo, and I wondered if they were secretly training some sort of animals for some sort of warfare. And I thought, That’s why they particularly mentioned the fact that there was no hospital, because of course, there should be a hospital wherever a large number of people are working with a large number of animals. With big animals, especially. Horses. Or perhaps elephants. I could not resist the thought of Hannibal and the Alps.

I wondered what I had to do with all this—my demonstrations—and I thought, Well, I swim and they are probably working with whales, and got the giggles about this and as we passed through the gates I was laughing my head off and one of the officers turned to me and smiled and said, “You have a very sensible attitude, Frau Haddon,” and someone else laughed as well.

And I saw them. Then.

The rows.

This is why they had disappeared.

This is where they had gone.

This is why there were gaps in the rows outside in Berlin, in Mannheim, and in Stuttgart.

This is what had happened.

Kamps
.

The motorcade stopped.

We got out.

We stared.

Yes, even they stared.

And Bruno stared.

“Splendid,” he said.

Splendid.

There were several specimens to be looked at. Winter had passed. Experiments in cold air had been conducted.

Now they wanted to try experiments in water temperatures. I was to show them how. It had something to do with how long one could endure the cold before one died.

I looked at the specimens.

The frost had devoured their toes and fingers. The officials, the scientists, and Bruno conferred about prevention. My own endurance was mentioned. Their heads shook and then they nodded.

The specimens waited.

I waited with them.

I realized that I was one of them. I was their extension to the outside.

But worse, I realized that whatever I could not endure, they would have to. I saw that when I had been pulled from my snowdrift and given blankets, they were left in theirs to freeze and die or to lose their extremities. They were left there because I had failed. And my failures frustrated the researchers. If I had only been able to go on—to freeze, perhaps—they would not have had to.

It came to be time for my demonstration.

I was to be placed in sea water. At its lowest temperature.

I tried to smile.

I was allowed a bathing suit.

I climbed up to the top of the tank.

The scientists, the officers, and the men from the Ministry of Enlightenment and Information watched me and prepared to take notes.

The dreamers—the specimens—watched me.

Frau Haddon was famous. They were told they were privileged to watch me.

I became determined that they should watch me die.

That last is not crazy. That is exactly what it was like.

I got down into the water.

They could all see me through the glass sides of the tank.

At first it was cold.

Then it was not cold.

I moved as little as possible, treading water.

Bruno would not allow this.

The point of the demonstration was survival.

He got up on the edge of the tank.

“
Schwimmen!
” he yelled.

I swam.

I swam the side stroke, feminine and graceful. I felt like a professional again. I was almost happy.

“
Schwimmen!
” Bruno cried, his voice already hoarse.

But I didn’t care if he shouted.

It was only flesh. That was all I had. If I had been a sailor in the North Sea, or a fisherman adrift in the Atlantic in midwinter, that would still be all I had. My flesh. And my vulnerability. My weakness. I switched to the breast stroke. Lazy and slow. Feminine.

“
Schwimmen!!
”

I smiled.

I even waved.

He wouldn’t dare come in himself. I knew that.

I swam to the far side of the tank. I went under. I thought about drowning, but then I thought, No. I’ll let the cold do this.

I surfaced.

I blew water, like a whale.

I thought of my first impression of the camp.

Again, I laughed.

I was achieving a measure of freedom.

I was swimming back into myself.

Nightmares begin with an Act.

Atonement.

Absolution.

I became numb.

My fingers went first.

Then my feet.

“My ankles hurt,” I said to Bruno, swimming past him.

The others were watching.

Death is fascinating.

A slow death is mesmerizing.

“Schwimmen!”

“I am.”

“Crawl!” he screamed. “Crawl!”

I fluttered my feet.

I could not feel them.

Nor my shins.

Nor my knees.

I began to kick.

I didn’t want to kick.

I wanted to die with grace.

Atonement.

Absolution.

The dreamers were watching me. Praying. I knew their prayers. It involved my life.

I began to sink.

Numbness is a weight.

“
Schwimmen!
”

The cry was blurred.

I was going to die, I thought.

“
Schwimmen
.”

It became very faint and was not a word at all. Not even German.

Let me do this for them, I prayed.

Then they need not do it for me.

The dreamers in their rows began to sway.

We became One.

If I could endure more cold than anyone ever had, then they would never have to endure the cold again.

I was dying.

Rows of stars and crosses.

I was going down.

Absolution for integrity.

Drowning.

It was the Light in the Darkness that ruined it.

In the Darkness, this Light—which seemed to be Death—and was—frightened me. It panicked me. I didn’t want the Light. I was afraid of it.

I shot up to the surface.

Bruno was there.

Schwimmen!

I thrashed.

I went down again.

Twice.

There was the Light again.

Terror.

The dreamers swayed. They held their breath. Their hair got tangled in my arms and legs. Their faces stared at me with prayers.

I grabbed for the surface.

I saw it.

I struggled for it.

I prayed for it.

Longed for it.

Begged for it.

I strove into its presence.

“God help me ” I cried.

And Bruno saved me.

would not speak to me after that. Not properly. I was retired from demonstrations. I became merely his wife again.

He stared at me a lot.

He was figuring something out. Something statistical. I had almost made it. That was the first part. I had performed magnificently. That was the second part. He had theories—that was the third part. There could be a combination of these things that would be perfect. That was the fourth part. It was genetic statistics. But he had not recognized, or was just not reconciled to, the fact that I had performed magnificently only when I wanted to die. Not live. The genetics of that is different.

And he thought he knew about genetics.

So, in silence and with scientific precision, he set about creating his babies.

But I would not have them.

I have tainted blood. I carry hemophilia. He did not forgive me.

The conclusion of this is that I survived. Unwittingly. Unwillingly.

I go back to the counting.

One-and-two-and.

One-and-two.

The Nightmare, you see, will involve your integrity.

Or do I mean…intelligence.

He divorced me. I was being sent home.

I went on my final motorcar ride, driven by my own Dark Angel now, to Hamburg.

There was one last thing.

I had boarded the ship and, because it was not to weigh anchor for another four hours, I got off again. I wanted to have one last look at Germany. I don’t know why I wanted this, when it had all turned out so badly for me there, but I did. I sensed that there was something else for me to see.

I went down to the harbor.

It is a lovely harbor there, with old streets and ancient houses. And the ships stand up over everything. And everyone is involved in the river and in the sea. And there is something marvelously incongruous about these oceangoing ships standing inland, where there are fields and trees and houses and bridges. The sun shone that day, too.

I walked about. I went nowhere. I just walked.

And then it was that this last thing happened.

I was standing in a narrow street where the houses were extremely old. I could see ship masts and spars over the rooftops. There was little commerce in the street. A few cyclists passed and that was all.

A man came all at once, stumbling as though blind, from between the houses.

I stopped on the curb, watching him, wondering what assistance he might need.

But he was not blind, merely blinded. He had been in the dark.

Gradually he was able to see, and he looked about him.

There was only me. And the houses. And, faraway, the sky.

He looked at it. He looked at me.

He approached.

His clothes were damp. He smelled. It was a stale smell. Wet. Part of it was human excrement.

He was old. Or he appeared to be. He was bearded. His walk was crazy—this way and that—and I wondered if he was drunk.

He wasn’t.

He stared at me. His eyes were clouded. He raised his hand like a word: some sort of greeting. I waited.

This was the first dreamer I had met, face to face, hand to hand, since Mr. Seuss, long, long ago in Paris.

I said, in German, “Yes?”

He said, in German, “Will you help me?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “I must die.”

I nodded. I tried to understand.

“I have hidden,” he went on, “hoping for a ship, hoping for some way out. But there is none. My wife and children have not come. They were to meet me here. We were to go away. What month is this?”

I told him. “August.”

“August?”

“August, nineteen thirty-eight,” I said. I took his hand.

“Excuse my hands,” he said. “I have waited a long time.”