A Perfect Madness (6 page)

“
You’ll find these much
better than the ones served in the coffee houses.”

“
Yes, I will try one.
Thank you,” Erich said, deciding to play along with the proper game
of manners being displayed by his hosts. Out of the corner of his
eye, he caught a lone candle burning on a small table in the foyer,
very similar to the one he remembered burning in Benjamin Keiler’s
home, and turned to look at it.

“
The candle is in memory
of my father,” Dr. Kaufmann said quickly, noticing Erich’s
interest. “It is a Jewish tradition to light a candle on the
anniversary of a loved one’s death. Do you not do the
same?”

“
No, I might visit a grave
with my parents, that is all,” Erich responded, beginning to feel
uneasy by the direction of the question. He knew nothing about
Jewish customs, and really didn’t care to know. Their religious
beliefs had always been sort of mystical to him, with weird
intonations from a rabbi that seemed to make little
sense.

“
Julia has asked
permission to visit with you away from the university,”

Dr. Kaufmann said, smiling for the
first time. “You may think it strange that she must request
permission at her age, but things may start to unravel here soon as
they already have in your country.”

“
I would hope not.
Czechoslovakia is a sovereign country,” Erich replied, glancing
again at the burning candle, which he now enjoyed, knowing its
meaning.

“
Have you noticed the
increasing number of refugees coming into Prague from
Germany—mostly Jews, I’m afraid, and some gypsies?”

“
No sir, I haven’t,” Erich
replied, trying hard to look straight at Dr. Kaufmann. “Actually, I
have little interest in politics. Becoming a doctor is all I want
to do.”

From the frown on Dr. Kaufmann’s face,
Erich knew immediately his detached response to the question was
not what Dr. Kaufmann wanted to hear from him.

“
You are aware of the
Nürnberg Laws that prohibit German citizens from associating with
Jews?” Dr. Kaufmann asked in a more unwelcoming tone of
voice.

“
Yes. But I really don’t
care. We are in Prague, not Germany. Julia could be a Bedouin Arab
and I would still want to have coffee with her.”

“
Are you a Christian,
Erich?” Dr. Kaufmann asked, carefully measuring Erich’s mannerisms
now as if he were a patient.

“
Would it make any
difference if I weren’t?” Erich replied in a sharp tone, turning
the strange questioning back on Dr. Kaufmann, who seemed surprised
by his hostile reaction.

“
No, no, it would perhaps
help me understand you better, if I knew more about how a Christian
looks at what is happening to the Jews here in our small corner of
the world. Please forgive me if I’ve offended you.”

Julia suddenly stood up, her eyes
bristling with frustration.

“
Father, forgive me, but
this questioning is all nonsense. We are talking about going to a
coffee house where other students gather, not a formal
engagement.”

“
You are right, Julia, the
coffee house is fine; there will be nothing further though, nothing
serious. You do understand, Erich?” Dr. Kaufmann said, leaving the
room, taking his coffee cup with him.

Yet the chemistry between Erich and
Julia deepened, as each knew it would and desperately wanted.
Visits to the coffee houses after classes became treasured moments
that were soon followed by weekly dinners at Julia’s home, an
insistence at first by her father as a way of gauging Erich’s true
feelings and intentions towards Julia, being ever mindful of the
insane babblings of Hitler now filling the airways in Prague and
the rest of the Republic. In time, it would become unsafe for them
to be seen together, he knew. But as the weeks passed, Dr.
Kaufmann’s fears and those of Mrs. Kaufmann gave way to a growing
respect and friendship with Erich. Long discussions in Dr.
Kaufmann’s study would follow the dinners, on subjects of every
genre. And in time, Erich became more certain than ever that
psychiatry was his future. Understanding the complex intricacies of
the mind could eventually uncover the soul itself, he believed and
stated to Dr. Kaufmann. And then, the demons that haunt so many
people could be dispelled forever. He also began to acquire an
elementary knowledge of the Jewish faith, which had been largely
absent throughout his studies in the Lutheran schools he attended
as a child.

One evening, for no particular reason,
he posed a question that puzzled not only Dr. Kaufmann but Julia as
well, because of its isolated detachment from their conversation on
Jungian thought.

“
Jews sometimes seem to
think they have a monopoly on suffering, don’t they, Dr.
Kaufmann?”

But Dr. Kaufmann was quick to
answer.

“
Yes, but only where there
is no reason for it except being a Jew.”

And with that the evening dialogues
were over. Later, walking back to his apartment, Erich stopped at
the edge of the Old Town square and sat down on the steps in front
of St. Nicholas Church, looking at Kafka’s house next to it, to
think on his question about suffering. The Lutherans in Germany,
and most of the Catholics with them, seemed to care little about
what was happening to the Jews there. Yet, to think on their long
suffering in Europe would make a stone weep. There had to be
something deeper to cause Germany and the rest of Europe to want
Jews to suffer. It made no sense otherwise, he thought. He had no
answer though, and thought perhaps Julia would bring the truth to
him, as she always seemed to do.

In December, during the holidays, Dr.
Kaufmann was overly anxious to begin the evening discussion, but in
a more somber mood. As he lifted a journal from his study desk,
Erich and Julia and her brother Hiram, who sometimes joined in
their discussions, hurriedly gathered around him like little
children might do in anticipation of hearing a wonderful magical
story. Dr. Kaufmann opened the journal,
The Archive of Racial
and Social Biology
, and began to read from an article authored
jointly by Dr. Ernst Rudin, a Swiss-born psychiatrist of
international renown, and Dr. Viktor Schmidt, Erich’s father. The
article was titled “Steps Toward Making Racial Hygiene a Fact Among
the German People.” From his prestigious position as director of
the Research Institution for Psychiatry of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Society in Munich, Rudin had enlisted Erich’s father and others
working at the institute to become Nazis. The surprising article
concluded by praising the Nürnberg Laws for preventing the further
penetration of the German gene pool by Jewish blood. Stunned and
ashamed, Erich bowed his head between his hands, saying nothing.
His father had finally crossed the line, was all he could think.
But what Dr. Kaufmann did not read to Erich and Julia was his
father’s solemn exhortation that the individual physician must
become a genetics doctor, a guardian of the Nordic race. Dr.
Kaufmann knew the emotional pain that passage would cause
Erich.

Dr. Kaufmann gave the article to him.
“I’m sorry to spring such shameful words on you this way, Erich.
You may have the journal and do with it what you like; but you
should never disavow your father, only his words and what he stands
for.”

Erich looked at both Julia and her
father. How far his emotions had traveled to love, as he did, these
two good and gentle people: Dr. Kaufmann, who had become his
mentor, and his dear Julia, whom he had fallen so deeply in love
with. He had disavowed the Nürnberg Laws when they were enacted,
and in doing so, spread denial in his mind to the horrific
probability that was sure to follow—the extermination of the German
Jew. What he must do, he vowed to himself like a young warrior
called to a sacred mission, was to hurry to finish his studies at
the university and quickly return to Germany, where he could speak
as a doctor against the genetic madness sweeping through the
medical profession. He had been away too long. But now Erich wanted
only to cling to the goodness surrounding Julia and her family like
the encircling arms of Mother Mary.

Erich rose from his chair and laid the
article on Dr. Kaufmann’s desk. Before he could speak, Julia
touched his hand, then held it tightly.

“
There is a sadness in our
hearts for the terrible pain you must feel,” she said, kissing him
softly on his cheek.

“
Several years back my
father spoke of this craziness when we visited the eugenics
institution in America. Nothing was said of the Jews, only the
misfits, the insane and physically disabled. I am ashamed. No
doctor should take comfort in such foolishness.”

Dr. Kaufmann stood behind his study
desk for a second more, looking at Julia and Erich holding
hands.

“
These days are not the
best of times for a Jewish girl and a German boy to be in love,” he
said, trying to smile. “Evil always seems to find a way of emptying
the heart of everything that is good.”

After he had left the room, Julia
embraced Erich, clinging to him as they walked to the front
door.

“
Surely nothing will come
of this, will it?”

Erich did not respond, but peered into
the cold, dark night waiting on him for the long walk home. Snow
mixed with ice was beginning to fall, harkening the advent of the
terrible Prague winters. Perhaps another omen, he thought, pulling
his jacket tightly around his neck.

“
You must think seriously
about leaving Prague, you and your family. Go to England or
America,” he shouted back to Julia as he disappeared into the
swirling blackness before him.

***

FOUR

B
ack in his small,
two-room apartment, three streets past the German university, Erich
pulled off his wet clothes, tossed them in a corner, lit up a
cigarette, and sat down naked behind a makeshift desk stacked with
medical textbooks. He was clearly shattered by the article
coauthored by his father, essentially condemning the Jews to death.
Politically, the Jewish race might be thought to be expendable by
the virulent voices within the Nazi party, but surely not from
physicians, Hippocrates’s heirs. Compassionate euthanasia might be
seen as ethical to some, he believed, but not when it’s based on
race. Erich tried to shut his eyes to the truth that was clearly
spread out before him in the article. His father had always been a
paragon of the compassionate German physician, but that was before
he had become totally obsessed with the eugenics movement. All
sense of the sacred line carefully drawn over two thousand years
ago between a duty to treat the sick and helpless and duty to the
state had been cast aside by him like so much rubbish.

“
I will never forgive him
for shaming me this way. God can forgive him—that’s His job, isn’t
it?” Erich yelled out, a slamming his fist against the wall,
breaking the plaster.

After his trip to America, he had
carefully avoided another confrontation with his father and had
dismissed the entire field of eugenics as a medical fairyland, not
what doctors should be about. He would become, instead, a
compassionate psychiatrist and heal the crippled minds of the
world. In doing so, he would purposely shut out the frightening
nightmares spawning across all of Germany by Hitler’s National
Socialist Party and its calling for the eradication of the Jewish
race. This veil of ignorance had served him well, keeping his feet
dry from the bloody flood of terror now washing away the last
pockets of resistance offered by reason and goodness. Only a few
faint voices in medicine and the churches remained to denounce the
spreading evil, and they, too, would become silent. Where had his
father been in all of this? Erich kept asking himself. Sleep would
come hard to him tonight, as it would for the rest of his
life.

The next morning as he entered the
long hall leading to the pathology lab, a group of student members
of the volatile German Sudeten party were gathered around the door
leading into the lab, leaving only a narrow entrance and exit
aisle. After he stepped into the large room, the students began
chanting loudly, “Germany Forever! Germany Forever! Throw out the
Jews! Throw out the Jews!”

Erich turned around in time to see
Julia with two other Jewish medical students struggling to make
their way through the aroused students, who had now linked their
arms together, completely blocking the doorway. Stunned by the
students’ hostility, he froze for a brief second before moving to
Julia’s aid. Placing his hands on the shoulders of two male
students nearest the doorway, he said in a loud voice coated with a
threatening authority inherited from his father, “What are you
imbeciles doing?”

“
They are Jews, they no
longer belong here,” a tall, blond student shouted back at
Erich.

“
They may be Jews but they
are Czechs just like many of you. Now let them pass.” His voice
boomed louder as he pushed the two students away from the doorway,
opening a path for Julia and her friends.

Once inside, Julia followed Erich to
their lab station, which they had purposely chosen so they could
work together. She immediately began trying to calm her friends,
presenting a steeliness Erich had never seen before in her. It
seemed so antithetical to her gentle nature and grace that it
rattled him for a short moment. She showed no tears, no fright.
Only the grim fierceness of a cornered animal prepared to fight for
its existence glistened in her eyes.