A Perfect Madness (12 page)

Refusing to cry again, Julia turned
back to Eva, who was walking back and forth holding Anna, singing
softly to her an ancient Slavic lullaby.

“
There will be no more,
Eva, letters from home.”

“
Maybe. Some may have come
through before the war began.”

“
Yes, we can hope that
happened,” Julia said wishfully. “Now tell me, what is the news? It
must be monumental, the way you rushed in here yelling.”

“
It is!” Eva cried,
bursting with joy again. “Colonel Moravec is forming different
groups from the Czechs now in England to return to Czechoslovakia
and join the resistance there.”

“
Colonel
Moravec?”

“
Yes, Frantisek Moravec,
the Czechoslovak military intelligence chief who escaped to England
the day before Hitler arrived. He is a hero to everyone back
home.”

Eva put Anna in her crib, gently
tucking her in, then turned to face Julia.

“
We must go, join
together, and go back to fight,” she said deliberately, trying to
rein in her excitement.

“
What of Anna?”

“
Do you think Anna is any
different from the thousands of children left behind in wartime?”
Eva asked, surprised by Julia’s question and hesitation.

“
No, but she is such a
little baby.”

“
My sweet Julia, there are
10,000 mothers waiting with open arms to care for your Anna,” Eva
said, taking Julia in her arms.

Julia broke away from Eva and walked
over to the tiny makeshift crib she had fashioned using one of the
dresser drawers and looked at her sleeping child for several
moments.

“
Anna is a Jew. Have you
forgotten? What if they can’t find any Jewish family to take her
and she’s placed with a Protestant—or even worse, a
Catholic?”

“
Do you think God gives a
shit who clothes and feeds and loves little children, so long as
they do it?” asked Eva, amused at Julia’s surprising
innocence.

Stunned by Eva’s brashness, Julia
turned away momentarily to gather her thoughts. She had never heard
Eva use such a vulgar word before, but each day brought a new
dimension to their growing friendship, whether she wanted it or
not.

“
I care, Eva. I care
whether God does or not.”

“
You should, but the
caring ends there. Wars have a habit of mixing up all sorts of
faiths and then telling you yours doesn’t count anymore if you try
and go solo.”

“
What if the foster mother
is an atheist? Anna would be an atheist if I shouldn’t come back. I
couldn’t stand that,” Julia pressed, fighting to hold back new
tears forming in her eyes.

“
There are no atheists in
war. Some like to brag they are, but they’re as scared as you and I
will be, once the fighting starts,” Eva said. Putting her hands on
Julia’s shoulders, she added, “We will fight together and come home
to Anna together, I promise you.”

“
We will see,” was all
Julia could think to say.

Every time Julia looked at Eva, she
envied without shame her beauty and richness for life. She had felt
that way about life, too, until the terrible night of her rape.
Something was stolen from her, swept away and lost in the changing
winds of fate. Fearless, Eva would fight Beowulf’s monsters
barehanded should she have to. Yet she was draped with a simple
peasant grace few people would ever know. Their deepening
friendship began at the crossing of their lives the moment the
refugee train chugged away from Prague headed for Rotterdam.
Entering the car where Julia and Hiram were desperately trying to
calm the mounting fears of twenty or so crying children, she
immediately took over the scene. Gay lilts burst forth from her
husky voice, unending for over an hour. With calmness restored, she
walked back and forth in the aisle, laughing and making funny faces
at the younger children and pouting and winking at the older ones.
There was no end to her energy. Later she sat down next to Julia
who was holding a sleeping child and simply announced, “My name is
Eva. You and I will be good friends.”

Now, as Julia looked at her friend,
whom she trusted greatly, she found herself being asked to go to
Colonel Moravec’s headquarters and give him her life.

“
Two Czech women who want
to be heroes, is what we will tell him,” Eva said, laughing
loudly.

“
Perhaps by chance we will
find Erich in Prague and he can join us. He would, you
know.”

Eva stopped laughing, looking in
amazement at Julia.

“
Erich is our enemy, a
German, until the war is over. We shouldn’t forget
that.”

“
No, he is different. You
will see when we are together after the war.”

“
Perhaps, but we must get
to Prague first. We will go to Colonel Moravec tomorrow early, to
begin our journey.”

***

EIGHT

Prague, 1939

S
tanding on Charles
Bridge, Erich listened for the soft gurgling voices of the Vltava
River passing beneath him but could hear nothing. It was as if it
too had been silenced in sadness this day, like all of Prague, by
the loud rumbling of German tanks moving slowly across the bridge
above its flowing waters. It was a good day to be alive, if you
were a Nazi.

Finally, Erich caught the faint noise
of water rushing against and past the ancient stone pillars
supporting the bridge. It was a sound, though louder, that for no
particular reason thrilled Julia each time they came to the bridge
together. It was always as if she had never experienced such a
sound before as the river went by. “A river has so much to say, so
many stories to tell, if we will listen,” she would say. “The
voices from the bottom are deeper and different from the voices in
the shadows on top.” At first he was amused at the display of such
playful wonder from her; yet in time, the ritual of listening to
the river’s voices became a separate moment in time for both of
them, a moment when nothing else mattered except the joyous
innocence of being in love. He was alone now with Julia gone, and
the river had grown quiet, its eerie darkness now haunting him.
Only the silence of an uncommon sadness could be heard rising from
the waters. Prague had fallen.

Earlier in the day, Erich had
journeyed to the Hradcany Castle hoping to catch a glimpse of
Hitler, whom he had never seen. Standing behind a row of
steel-helmeted soldiers, he watched, more in fear than awe, as
Hitler exited his touring car and walked alone towards the massive
open doors of the great castle. Shouts of “Sieg Heil” immediately
rose from the Sudeten Germans like hosannas on high as he passed
their frantic faces. At the door, Hitler stopped and turned,
focusing his eyes on Erich’s face for a second, as if he knew him.
But no smile came from him. Gods don’t smile, and at that moment
Hitler had become one—a very modern god, but still of the ilk the
ancient Germanic gods were in arousing the frantic passions of all
who would look upon him. Erich felt it, too, but later he dismissed
it as a moment of weakness, a moment when reason can be temporarily
pushed aside by some unexplained emotion.

Darkness now covered Erich as he left
Charles Bridge, walking slowly back to his apartment near the
university. He had stayed too long thinking about Julia and where
she might be. Approaching the Old Town square, waves of cheers from
a huge throng massed around the statue of Jan Hus, the Protestant
martyr, rang through the crisp night air. Standing at the edge of
the square, Erich recognized several Sudeten German medical
students and turned quickly up a side street away from the square
towards the Carolinum of Charles University. The crowd was growing
restless and nasty. Small groups began to tear away from the outer
edges, racing madly around, smashing store windows and doors of
several small Jewish shops facing the wide square. As the frenzy
intensified, Erich wondered where the German soldiers were that had
poured into the city all afternoon. Even now the distant strains of
moving trucks and tanks could still be heard, and would be
throughout the long night. Tomorrow would find a German soldier on
every corner, but tonight belonged to a quickening
madness.

Erich stopped when he heard the
rapidly moving steps behind him and turned to face a group of
hostile students and men shouting obscenities, rushing towards him
thinking he might be a Jew. As they neared, one medical student
recognized Erich and quickly silenced the virulent jeers of the
angry mob now encircling him.

“
He is a German, a medical
student like I am, not a Jew. Look at his face,” he shouted above
the howling men. “He soon will be a soldier for the
Fatherland.”

Like hungry predators deprived of a
kill, the mob growled and raced quickly on, hunting for another
prey.

“
We must follow them,” the
student said, taking Erich by the arm, “lest they turn on you as an
enemy of Germany.”

“
I am a German citizen.
How could I not be for my country?” Erich responded, looking
incredulously at the student.

“
You are seen by many
students as a friend of the Jews—that is reason enough. Come with
us, if you value your life tonight.”

Erich said nothing more and began
walking with the student towards the chanting mob, which had
gathered next to the Estates Theatre. Someone began singing “Watch
on the Rhine,” and soon everyone joined in the rousing national
anthem, including Erich. Singing for God and country cleanses the
soul, his father had told him one Sunday morning many years back.
Standing with his father and mother in Dresden’s St. John’s
Lutheran Church, together they sang out Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress
is Our God” at a level that would have deafened the angels, and it
thrilled him. His soul had been cleansed. He was singing for God.
The same thrill surged through Erich as the crowd broke into
harmony during the second stanza, and his lungs exploded with great
gusto singing the patriotic words.

“
Dear Fatherland, no fear
be thine. Firm and true stand the watch on the Rhine,” rolled from
his lips with such intensity that even God might tremble at its
force. Then he stopped singing. An elderly Jewish man and woman
were closing their small leather shop across the street from the
theatre when several men broke from the crowd and raced towards
them.

“
Jews!” they cried. “Stop
them!”

The crowd quickly followed, blocking
the door to the store and forming two circles of screaming voices
around the old man and woman. Erich was the last to cross the
street and stood away from the outer circle but close enough to
seem a part of it to others who might be watching him. At first,
only venomous tongues shouting obscenities threatened the man and
woman. Then, as if it were playtime in kindergarten, unnamed hands
began to shove the helpless two Jews back and forth across the
circle, slow at first, then faster until they collided with each
other, falling to the pavement. Two men quickly yanked the man and
woman to their feet to start the game again, but this time the man
and woman fell apart from each other from exhaustion and lay very
still. For a second no one moved as the circle grew smaller around
them. One man, maybe forty in age, handsomely dressed in suit and
tie, seeming very much like a doctor or lawyer, walked over to the
old man and woman now sprawled out on their backs. Looking down on
them, he paused for a moment, then spit twice on the man, striking
him in the face. Others quickly followed, until the faces of the
old man and woman were covered over with gobs and mounds of
dripping spit and phlegm and smelly tobacco juice. The last of the
crowd tried to urinate on the two old Jews but couldn’t as everyone
roared in laughter. Frustrated, the man lashed out with his foot,
kicking the old man in his side, then his head. Others joined then,
kicking the man and the old woman, too, even stomping on their
stomachs and then their faces. Only the old woman cried out at
first, but grew quiet like her husband when the toe of a shoe
shattered her temple and eye socket, flinging the eyeball to the
pavement beside her. Laughing, the guilty man calmly picked up the
eyeball and placed it on the sealed mouth of the now dead woman.
Silenced by their own violence, the rabble began to disperse, each
feeling giddy with the murder of the old man and woman.

Erich remained standing alone for a
few minutes in the dark shadows of the street until the mob was
gone, ashamed at what he had witnessed and not done. He had made no
effort to interfere with the killing of the old man and woman, nor
had he wanted to. An unrelenting fear had seized him earlier, when
he faced the crowd mistakenly shouting the same obscenities at him
as they had the old man and woman. Kneeling down in the blood still
draining from the two mangled bodies, filling the cracks in the
sidewalk beside him, Erich lifted the arm of the old woman and then
the man, searching for a pulse, but found none. Julia’s face
flashed before his eyes, and then the faces of her parents. At the
right moment on a given day, they could have been the shattered
bodies lying dead before him.

It had come to this, as Julia’s father
knew it would, though perhaps sooner than expected. God would be
beseeched tonight by a thousand angry voices and more, asking where
He was in all of this. Perhaps the old man and woman did, too,
Erich thought, standing and wiping the blood from his hands on his
trousers.