A Perfect Madness (29 page)

***

TWENTY

Erich, Brandenburg, 1942

I
n the weeks after
euthanizing little Brigitte and the other four children, Erich
stayed largely to himself, ignoring all social invitations from
colleagues and anyone else associated with the hospital, except
Maria. Together they had taken the long fatal step away from
everything they knew was good and right, making each one’s guilt
the other’s as well. Standing silently in Brigitte’s room that
terrible day, still holding the dead child in his arms, he had
turned to Maria and simply said, “All these years, we’ve been
educated to help the sick, to heal them—not to kill them. And look
at this child. This is what you and I have done.” And then both
parted, saying nothing further, nor daring to look at the
other.

When late hours of the night came to
him that first day, his soul had no answer for what had taken the
place of medicine—the killing of the five “misfits”—and was
strangely quiet, as if it were no longer a part of him. Written
words of lies twisted his mind, as he penned letters to the parents
of the murdered children, attributing their deaths to unexpected
complications. It would be so much easier to say they were killed
out of compassion, an enduring Christian virtue in medicine, which
everyone understood. At least then it would be seen as a good
death. Yet, all virtues have their own bad moments if taken too
far. How many crippled children could one kill in the name of
compassion and still remain virtuous? he wondered.

For a while, his mind traced back to a
long discussion he shared with Julia and her father late one
evening on this very subject. What if telling the truth causes a
greater harm than lying? had been the question raised by Dr.
Kaufmann. He had quickly answered, with Julia agreeing, that lying
would become the virtue then, not truth. But Dr. Kaufmann pressed
the question further.

“
Then killing someone who
is innocent for a greater good, perhaps to save the lives of ten
people, would become the virtue.” Erich had no answer, nor did
Julia.

“
It is the principle that
is the real virtue, not the act. Should the principle die, there
would be no more innocence,” Dr. Kaufmann said, closing the
discussion.

Near one in the morning and still
unable to sleep, Erich changed back to his street clothes and left
his apartment for Maria’s, which was located several blocks closer
to the hospital than his. There she shared a small three-room flat
situated over an empty kosher meat shop, whose Jewish owner had
simply disappeared one evening with all his family. Arriving at the
apartment, Erich banged on the door four times before Maria
responded.

“
Dr. Schmidt, what are you
doing here?” she asked, opening the door slightly, greatly puzzled
by Erich’s sudden appearance at her door, something which had never
happened before.

“
I thought we should talk
about this day. Do you mind?”

“
Tomorrow would be better,
it’s so late.”

“
No, tomorrow won’t do,
not really,” Erich said, pushing his way past Maria into the
apartment.

Maria hesitated, then closed the door,
and that of her bedroom. Erich studied Maria’s face for a moment
and was bothered that she displayed no anguish over what had
happened earlier, the terror they had brought to the children’s
rooms. Instead, her emotions seemed as hard as the floor beneath
his feet. Yet, he knew, neither one of them would emerge
spiritually unscathed from what they had done, and would do so
again in the days ahead.

“
Would you like a cup of
coffee, or a beer perhaps,” Maria asked.

“
Coffee might help, thank
you. Is your roommate sleeping?” Erich questioned, looking towards
the bedroom.

“
She is home with her sick
mother, why do you ask?”

“
What happened today is
only the beginning, I’m afraid. We’ve been ordered to keep it
secret from the public. That is what the ministry
wants.”

“
Why should we pretend
it’s a secret? Everyone will figure out something bad is happening
to the children if no one ever sees them again.”

Maria poured two cups of black coffee.
She was both glad and angry that he had come to her door. He was a
miserable man, that much she believed, hurting terribly as she was
but for different reasons. Deeply religious to the edge of
obsession, she loved all children, whether whole or not. And
misfits among God’s little creatures were to be loved as much, if
not more so, than those that were normal. Compassion from love was
Christlike, she had been taught, and gave great meaning to her
calling as a nurse. Killing those you love out of compassion, as
she did the children, bothered her deeply because the duty to do so
had been commanded by the state, not God. Had it been God, she
would own no guilt, because God is good.

Erich’s supposed compassion, she had
discerned, came from fear not love, and she despised him for
it.

Maria took several sips of coffee
waiting for Erich’s answer to her question, but none came. Instead
he said, “I want you to be my friend, Maria. It’s difficult not
having someone you can talk to, someone you can trust. I have no
other friends here at Görden.”

Erich’s words muddled her mind. They
were not what she had expected to hear from him. All she knew about
him was that he was a deeply disturbed young man with important
ties to the Chancellery through his powerful father, nothing more.
Whether she could trust him with her own problems and stories was a
question she had no answer for at this time.

“
I will listen and talk
with you, if that is what you want, but we will never be friends.
It’s very simple—I don’t like you and never will,” she said
dismissively.

Maria’s quick rejection to his offer
of friendship stunned Erich, pushing him to silence for several
minutes. He hadn’t expected such cold words from her. He now felt
she would betray him, too, spreading false rumors and reporting all
words he would utter to her to Dr. Heinze and the Health
Ministry.

“
I am sorry, it was a
terrible mistake to come here,” he said, taking his empty cup to
the kitchen sink, then walking to the door.

Maria followed him to the door, and
for no reason she could later think of, gently rested her hand on
his arm.

“
There are things
happening that we must accept and do, if we are to survive these
terrible times. Ending any child’s life bothers me deeply, as it
does you, I suppose, but I know it removes suffering from the
child. That fact alone is enough for me to do my duty,” she said
softly.

Erich stepped into the hall and looked
down the unlit stairway to the street. Maria’s words could have
been his. Compassion and science had led him to perform his duty,
too, so he believed, in bringing death to the five children,
certainly not the twisted desires of the state to purify the Aryan
race. Still, the cold fear of what they might have done to him had
he not obeyed remained like warm vomit from a sick stomach, choking
his thoughts and mind.

Starting down the steps, he stopped
and looked back at Maria, who was still standing in the doorway to
her apartment watching him.

“
We may be on a slippery
slope before this thing ends,” he said.

“
I know, but we’ll be
alright,” was all Maria could think to say, before closing the
door.

Erich reported in two hours late the
next morning. The night’s late visit to Maria’s apartment had been
a mistake, leaving him more unsettled than ever. His ward was empty
of patients for now, for which he was thankful. He knew, though,
that the beds would soon be filled as the state-mandated
registration and reporting of handicapped children grew in number.
They would come by the hundreds to be killed, unknowingly, to
achieve a greater good no one really understood or accepted.
Stopping by Dr. Heinze’s office, Erich completed the death
certificates of the five children, indicating the cause of death
for each child as “multiple emboli to the lungs, etiology unknown.”
It was as good a lie as any of the others he would soon use. Before
he could leave, Dr. Heinze entered the office with Erich’s old
nemesis, Franz Kremer, now very much a doctor, too.

“
You know Herr Dr. Kremer,
I believe,” Dr. Heinz said smiling at Erich.

“
Yes, we were classmates
in Prague for a short time.”

“
Good, then no
introduction is necessary. You must be old friends,” Dr. Heinze
said, still smiling oddly, Erich thought.

Neither one spoke though, nor
acknowledged the other’s presence. Looking at both of them eyeing
each other like two circling boxers waiting for the fight to begin,
it would be difficult to tell which one hated the other the
most.

“
Herr Dr. Kremer has been
assigned here by the Health Ministry for a few months to assist us
in establishing the children’s new therapy program. I’ve already
told him of your early success with the children,” Dr. Heinze said
in a proud tone, no longer smiling at Erich as he had
been.

Slightly dazed by Franz’s sudden
appearance at Görden, Erich said nothing in response to the weird
praise from Dr. Heinze, accolades for euthanizing children. From
the moment he walked into the office with Dr. Heinze, Franz had
fixed the slant of his eyes on Erich’s in an unyielding war of
nerves and stares to see who would blink first. Dr. Heinze watched
the dynamics for several seconds, then turned to Erich, smiling
oddly again as he had before.

“
You will take my place
and accompany Dr. Kremer to view a screening of the new film,
I
Accuse
, in the auditorium. Afterwards you are to write a report
on its value, if any, to the Health Ministry.”

Neither one speaking, the two
archenemies left the office together and started walking down the
hall to the right where the hospital’s small auditorium was
located. Anyone nearby watching the two men could not help but feel
some of the intense hatred flowing back and forth between them like
electrical charges, its high voltage no longer insulated by the
niceties of their profession. They were locked together in a world
separate from all around them, where time itself no longer seemed
to matter.

When they had walked but a few steps,
Franz asked, baiting Erich, “How is your Jewish whore?”

“
Julia was not a whore,
she was my friend then. You had no Jewish friends, I suppose,”
Erich said, turning the question back on Franz, who merely shrugged
his shoulders at the suggestion.

“
Never there, or anywhere
else. I am pure. You should know that.”

“
Perhaps.”

Both men stopped at the auditorium
door, childishly waiting for the other to open it. Neither one
would until Maria and two other nurses approached. Erich stepped
forward and held the door open until the three had entered, then
moved quickly inside ahead of Franz.

“
You should be more
careful with what you say and do, Erich. You don’t know who I am,
and what I am about,” he said as he walked past Erich and took a
seat close to Maria and the two nurses. Erich sat alone.

No one had seen the movie, though
rumors about the contents could be heard throughout the hospital
and in the cafés and beer gardens of the city. What begins as a
simple happy story of a wholesome German family quickly becomes
heart wrenching when the beautiful young wife is taken ill with
multiple sclerosis. In the movie’s most tender moment, the husband,
a physician, responding to his wife’s pleas to do so, gives her a
lethal injection. As she closes her eyes in death, a moment of
ethereal joy spreads across the husband’s face, watching her
terrible suffering end. But Erich saw much more than a sad story of
unconditional love being played out on the screen. And he wondered
if Franz and all the other doctors watching had read the same
message hidden in the tenderness of the moments before them.
Because the wife had given her husband permission to kill her,
ending all suffering was the most moral thing one could do. Yet,
still hiding ominously behind the scene was the admonition that
this same compassionate act must be available for those who are
incompetent and cannot ask for such a wonderful death, like the
mentally ill. Erich knew in a second that a subliminal dagger was
being thrust at the heart of these sick people—because the state
would take over the moral responsibility to act, allowing no one
else, family or friend, to do so.

In the days to come, the hospital
halls would echo limitless discussions of the morality of doctors
and nurses assisting an incurably diseased patient to die in peace.
It was the definition of disease, though, that bothered Erich the
most, because many of the mentally ill were already thought of as
diseased. The public and doctors throughout Germany could not help
but be moved by the deep feelings of sympathy and love expressed in
the film. Many were already there, taken in by the highly saleable
idea of Christian compassion spewing forth from the Health Ministry
like an awakened Mount Vesuvius. Evil wears many different clothes,
and the real reason, cleansing of the race, was deftly attired in
the royal colors of Christian compassion.