The Keeper of the Walls (47 page)

The night of November 9, Isaac didn't want to go to sleep, as his son had suggested. Since the seventh, they'd been expecting the worst, and stayed up all night. They tucked Mina into her bed, and dosed all the blinds in the house. At this moment, Wolf felt a sharp stab of guilt. Why hadn't he thought to move his parents right out of the house, where it was known that the richest Jews in Vienna had been residing for centuries? His shirt lay against his skin like a wet cloth, and he realized that perspiration had formed on every part of his body. Some inner premonition told him that tonight would be the night of the Reich's vengeance. Across from him, his mother lay, her eyes closed; and on the other side, sitting hunched over on the analysis couch, his father, suddenly a very old man, held the radio in hands that trembled. “They're going to want our blood for this vom Rath's life,” Isaac intoned, but his voice held no strength, and was quivering.

“Our bags are packed,” Wolf reminded him. “If there's the slightest sound of a mob, we'll awaken Mama and run from the side door.”

“Where they'll be waiting for us,” his father cut in.

Irritated, Wolf shrugged slightly. It was nearing midnight. He felt tired, bone weary, in fact; but tension kept him up, like the old man. They sat looking at each other, silent, pretending to listen to the radio. But in their bones, they felt the dread of which they were afraid to speak.

Wolf had almost decided to go to sleep for an hour's quick nap, when, near two in the morning, he heard a noise. It was the sound of glass shattering, and of men's voices raised. Electrified, he sat bolt upright, and ran to shake his mother awake. She was breathing heavily, with difficulty, and so, as he shook her shoulders, he felt enormous compassion. “We have to go now, Mama,” he said urgently.

Slowly, as if in a dream, Isaac rose too, and together they helped Mina to her feet. She cowered against her son. “Where are they coming from?” she asked.

“Everywhere. We'd better run now, through this door—”

Now the screaming had risen to a wild, swimming roar, and Wolf could feel the floor beneath his feet starting to shake. The noise of breaking glass seemed to be coming from this very house, although he knew that this could not actually be so. But he surmised that thousands of crazed men were coming through the Schwindgasse, thousands of men whose blood-lust for the Jews had taken possession of their very humanity. It was going to be worse than he had even anticipated.

To his horror, Mina had started to weep, refusing to move. Wolf opened the door, pushed the suitcases out, and went back to his parents. “We could hide in the garden, between the bushes,” he murmured. “They won't think to find us there. But we don't have a second to lose.”

Mutely, Isaac's face stared up at him. On the intelligent bearded face, a stunned expression was painted. Wolf recognized the signs of shock, and took over. Firmly, he seized his mother and father by the arms they were holding linked together, and pushed them out onto the small side street. Around them the din had become deafening, and he knew that every Jewish house along the way had been brutally destroyed. But it didn't matter, compared to the preciousness of their three lives. He propelled his parents to the small gate of the garden, and pushed them through. Then, directed by starlight and memory, he guided them to the far back, where some tall, manicured bushes loomed large and sheltering. He pushed his mother and father down into a crouching position, between two large shrubs, and squeezed behind them.

The hordes of frenzied Nazis were singing the Troopers' marching song, and bits and pieces of others. Now, for sure, Wolf knew that they had reached his house. He whispered, “Maybe they won't be so rough, because Aryans have been living here too.” But he realized that he was just trying to reassure himself that this was a nightmare that would pass, and to bring some paltry comfort to his weeping, frightened parents.

And then they saw them. Or, more precisely, they saw blazing torches, and barely human forms discernible in their lights. Mina opened her mouth, and immediately Wolf clamped his hand down over it. The cry was muffled. Their bodies frozen in horror, they listened as windows were broken, as furniture was hurled out the windows, as priceless objets d'art were crunched beneath the feet of the looters. Aghast, they saw, from the light of the torches, a medieval tapestry being ripped apart. “Let Judah die!” the shouting came, ferocious, like the roaring of a hundred mountain lions let loose inside a fragile, age-old cathedral.

Mina Steiner, crouching like a fugitive, watched as savages she'd never met literally lifted the beams off the ceiling of the house she had come to as a bride. And Isaac, in a hushed whisper, said, stupefied, “For centuries, Steiners have been born here, and Steiners have died here. I wanted you to have a son, Wolfgang, so that he, like I, and like yourself, might one day bring his bride to live in this house . . .
my
house.” There were tears streaming down the seams of his proud old face, and he held his wife's hand tenderly in his own, understanding that her thoughts, as always, had been synchronized with his.

Wolf, viewing the destruction of his birthplace, found himself unable to speak. He thought of Maryse, her beautiful eyes so filled with love, anxiety drawn into her small features, as he had last seen her at the train station. His own bride, for whom, during the past thirteen years, he had thanked God each bright morning of his life. He wondered then, for the first time, if he would
live
to hold her again in his arms, and if he would be granted the privilege of watching his Nanni grow into the full bloom of womanhood. With the terror of death, a great calm was taking over his senses. If he was to die, then so be it. He was strong enough to face the end. But for his parents, he whispered a prayer. God, he knew, would shield them.

Then he remained glued to the ground, his hands poised over the heads of his mother and father. The first band of looters was coming through the side gate, into the garden. He hadn't expected this. He'd been so sure that they would be in a hurry to continue down the Schwindgasse on their trail of destruction, that he'd taken it for granted that here, the Steiners would be safe from harm. Mina's mouth was still open, but no sound emerged. He saw that she had wet the earth with her fear, the fear of an animal at bay, knowing it would not escape the bloodhounds on its trail.

“Look!” one man cried, pointing to the gazebo. “Israel and Sarah had their little nesting place, too! Let's see what we can do to all of this!” And then a group of them ran forward, torches first. When the blaze began, they danced up and down, hurling broken pieces of the stone statues into the fire, crazed laughter emanating from mouths that seemed demented, out of proportion, like demons' lips.

The fire crunched on, and the looters remained one step ahead of it, taunting it to swallow up the entire garden. Wolf knew that if they stayed where they were, they would be burned alive, along with the bushes. He cursed himself, and with the desperation of self-preservation, whispered to his father: “We'll have to run for the street, and hope that if we keep to the shadows, they won't see us. Because they're not expecting to find us here.”

But his father wasn't moving. Wolf, horrified, recognized once more the signs of deep shock, and knew that he would not be able to reason with Isaac. Pulling his mother up, he held her hand firmly, and said in the lowest of voices: “You heard me, Mama. You'll have to try to make it alone. I'll have to carry Papa—he's not responding. . . . Now, when I tell you:
run!
”

From the corner of his eye, he saw his mother scramble forward, hugging the darkness of the hedge. He lifted his father into his arms, and followed, quickly. But his mother's foot had caught on something, and in her terror, she let out the smallest of cries as she fell forward on the ground. Suddenly there was an enormous shout, and Wolf knew that they had been found out, that the end had come. He bent down then, and, with the most infinite of gentleness, pulled his mother up and toward him with one arm, cradling his father to his breast with all the strength left in his other arm. The crazed men were now surrounding them completely, yelling obscenities, and he guessed that this would be the last moment of his freedom. He felt the strange, repulsive hands pull Mina away, and wrench the limp body of Isaac from his arms. And then he was pushed down, headfirst, onto the gravel.

For a single moment, Wolf imagined that they would leave the Steiners to perish in the fire. But no, they were now shoving them out into the street. He felt blows around his head and ears, and all over his body. “God, give me strength,' he begged. Ahead of him, they were throwing stones at his father, who was barely crawling on his knees. Wolf's eyes filled with tears. He couldn't cry out, for he knew that this would only incense them more. But he continued to pray for his father and mother.

Then he heard the voice. “Keep the young one for later,” it said, in the accents of authority. “And the old bitch. She isn't going to last the night, the way she looks. But the old geezer will have to go. He's done enough to fight our presence in Vienna.”

Only at this moment did Wolf use his voice. It was early dawn, and he could see that the street was littered with millions of shards of broken glass, like shining crystals in the roseate light. Wolf asked, “Where are you going to send my father? He's never hurt anyone in his life.”

“He helped pollute the earth with his vile Jewish body,” another man replied. “He'll be going with the rest of the political prisoners to Dachau. We know all about you Steiners. You plotted against the Reich, and paid money to keep us from power.”

“Why can't you send
me,
instead of him?”

“Because,” the authoritative voice came back, sardonically, “you'll lead us to the rest of the money. He's too old and decrepit to have known where you put it.”

Somewhere near him, he heard his mother cry out as Isaac was pushed into a crowd of malevolent faces and hands. Only once did the old man turn; and then, Wolf saw that the shock had passed, and that he was in complete control of his senses. His magnificent brown eyes bore into him, filled with their love and unconditional understanding. And then, his father disappeared between two large, fierce men.

He couldn't see his mother, but Wolf knew that from this moment on, they would have to think only about the two of them. Isaac Steiner had passed into another existence, from which they, helpless victims also, would not be able to extricate him.

W
hen the political prisoners
, many of them still in their nightshirts, were pushed outside the sealed train, they saw before them barbed wire, and a hedge of uniformed bodies. As they lifted their eyes to those bodies, they discerned long, corded whips in every hand. On either side of the barricade, a double row of men armed with whips was guarding the entrance to the camp outside the city of Dachau.

Isaac Steiner was among the first to be sent out into the live hedge. On his back was only a thin cambric shirt; on his lower part, the remains of serge suit pants. He felt the immense fist going into the small of his back, hurling him face forward into the raised whips. The sky was suffused with a dusky sundown, and the strips of leather, curled into the clouds, made a funny swirling pattern against this dusk. Isaac had no time to think before he felt the slashes, burning into his already pummeled body like live flames, cutting into his skin to the muscle, through the blood veins and right down to the bone. He was sixty-eight, and had never, even as a child, experienced any physical punishment.

Other men were coming behind him, pushing him ever forward, bent in half and only semiconscious, into the live hedge. The ground was spattered with blood—
his
blood, he knew, but still he felt himself being propelled farther. Was there to be no end to this pain, so excruciating that now he could no longer see the ground before him? “Jehovah, sweet Lord of my people, save me,” he whispered, or thought that he was whispering as he fell, and the wind was knocked out of him. And then, the pain miraculously ebbed away. Isaac's face, in the rictus of death, could not erase his own responsive smile.

God had saved him from the gates of Dachau.