Child of the Journey (27 page)

How tired he was of it all--of visions of people in a past and future that made no sense.

"Do you know what legends are, Misha? Myths?" he asked.

The boy nodded. "Papa called them stories based on a grain of truth."

"Did your papa rid the man of his dybbuk?"

Misha disentangled himself and turned on his side. "When the ghost came out of the man, I thought it went into me," he said in a whisper. "Papa laughed and said he had made sure the closest thing to the man was a big black cat. That was right before..."

"Before what?" Sol asked.

"Before they took Mama and Papa away. Papa put me outside on the fire-landing. He said, 'Mishele, now
you
must be quiet as a ghost.' I heard noise. Shouting. I stayed out there all night. When I went back in, the front door had been knocked down. Mama and Papa were gone. Sometimes..."

The boy hesitated. "Sometimes," he went on, "I think I turned into a ghost and that's why the Nazis punished Mama and Papa." He was trembling--weak with memories. "Maybe the Hauptsturmführer is my real papa, as he says...."

"Stop that!" Sol insisted. The child must have an aunt, an uncle, someone who could attempt his release. Such miracles did happen. Money. Someone knew someone willing to...

Sol stopped himself. There were dreams and there were dreams. Better to be
Schmuckstück
than to hope falsely, for that could just bring deeper despair. Especially to Misha. Hempel would never let the child go. Not alive.

"Listen to me, Misha. I cannot, will not, return to that hospital alive."
 

He lay on Hans' bunk, listening to the echo of his own words inside his head. Hempel had recently ordered the windows and doors kept closed for "security." Sweat, breath, and body effluvia mingled in a heat as oppressive as a steam bath. With less than a foot of sleeping space per person, the inmates slept spoon-style, arms thrown about each other like caricatures of connubial bliss. He could not so much as lift an arm. In his own bunk, no more than a hand's width separated his face from the roof joist. Searching for air in the stifling barracks, he had worked free a composition tile. By lifting a bit of the roofing, he could breathe in the night.

Whatever this was, it was not living.

When sleep had claimed the boy, Sol made himself a promise. He would have no more of this. Head twisted toward the moonlight, he planned his own execution. He would carry no more stones, hobble no more with bleeding feet along the shoe-track designed to test footwear for good German soldiers. Above all, he would not lie alive beneath Schmidt's instrument.

If they wanted his eyes or his testicles, they could remove them from a corpse.

Gripping the edge of the bunk, he wriggled out of it. Below and beside him were the sweat-slicked faces of over three hundred wretches hacking and choking in their sleep...swaddled in striped bunting, asleep in the Führer's arms.

Sol moved among them, careful to awaken no one. Oddly calm, he made his way toward the far corner of the barracks, where the inmates had hung a tattered blanket to provide suicides with a triangle of privacy. As he reached out to pull aside the blanket, it occurred to him that he might not find the noose empty. There were not too many days or nights that it went unused.

The noose dangled empty and alluring.

As if wanting a witness to his act, he shuffled to the window and wiped away the accumulation of breath with his sleeve. The sentry tower was silhouetted by a new moon, and he could see a helmeted guard bending his head to light a cigarette. A good German soldier, smoking on duty? Shame!

He turned to face the noose and bumped into Misha.

"Herr Freund, you mustn't." The boy tugged at Sol.

"You should not be here," Sol said sternly.

The boy let go and took a step backward. "I
am
here," he said, "and I will stay. You're in this camp because of me. The Nazis would never have found you if I hadn't led them to you. Only I didn't know it was going to happen. It will be your fault if your dybbuk finds me--but you will
know...
."

The sentry light swept across the window, highlighting the expression of raw fear--and courage--on the young face. The child was right, Sol thought, relinquishing the moment. He must alleviate Misha's fear.

Then he would be free to do this for himself.

U
nder cover of night, the religious among the almost-dead gathered outside Barracks 18 to pray for themselves. Sometimes they were led by a rabbi. More often than not, the task of leading the prayers fell to the physically strongest among them. The bodies of those who died during prayers simply lay there until the morning detail carried them away, along with the others who had died in their bunks during the night. For the time being, the Nazis found this piling of corpses convenient and chose not to interfere.

Tonight was
Shabbat
--Sabbath. Rumor had it that a rabbi known for the depth and breadth of his studies had recently been brought into the camp. If the reb, whose name Sol had not been able to ascertain, remained among the living, Sol thought, he would be conducting the Service. When he had first come to the camp, Sol had tried, for Misha's sake, to find out whether the boy's parents had ended up here. Often, people were sent to Oranienburg first from Berlin, so he had asked everyone who had been there if they had met Rabbi Czisça and his wife. He discovered only, from someone who had shared the journey with them, that they had indeed been transported to Oranienburg. Whether or not one or both of them were still there, alive, was a question that remained unanswered. Since men and women were separated upon arrival, here at Sachsenhausen and at the holding camp in Oranienburg, he was unlikely to learn more about Misha's mama. As for the rabbi, Misha's papa, he would ask that again tonight. Perhaps this new rabbi would turn out to be Rabbi Czisça himself; such coincidences abounded in the strange sub-culture of the camp.

"Go back to sleep, Misha," Sol whispered, saying nothing of this to the boy for fear of raising his hopes in vain. "I will find the rabbi and he will get rid of the dybbuk so that you need not be afraid."

He led the boy to the bunk and made it out to Barracks 18 without incident. In the quadrangle separating the barracks from Nazi quarters, thirty men hung from a crossbar. Each time the searchlights swept the area, he could see them jerking and convulsing. Earlier that evening, they had been hooked onto the crossbar by the same rope that cuffed their wrists together behind their backs. Though they would be dead by morning, in their present pain they begged for death now. Huddled against the wall, in the blackness of the night, Sol listened to their wails and to the chanting of the congregation of the dying.

Almost at once, as if their lament had drawn it to him, the strains of a Bach concerto began inside Sol's head----

----
gossamer veils of blue dust-moted light filter through a stained-glass window and onto a man seated at a pipe organ.
Blond and broad- shouldered, he is obviously as athletic as he is musically talented. His outward appearance is that of the idealized German farm boy.

The Bach concerto he is playing reverberates throughout the tall reaches of a rococo church that looks as if it were once a castle. Pale blue Grecian designs and rectangular moldings trimmed with gilt separate the walls from the ceilings. Everywhere there are frescoes with Biblical themes----
 

"Who is there?"

The words, heavy with Spanish accent, dissipated the vision and the music and the blue light. Sol turned toward the voice. A searchlight swept the area and he caught a glimpse of dark skin.

"Solomon Freund."

"Welcome. I'm Reb Nathanson."

Sol felt a deep sense of disappointment and realized how much he had been hoping to be able to bring the boy good news. "I need help, Reb," he said without further preamble.

"Who among us does not?"

Despite himself, Sol chuckled softly at the hint of humor in the rabbi's voice. "I have long believed there is a dybbuk in me," he said, feeling more at ease. "The time has come to have it removed so that I can--"

"I understand," the rabbi said. "I have dealt with such matters before. If you are right, God willing I can make it disappear. At worst, I will persuade it to leave you for one of those wretches on the crossbar. It can cause no harm in that labyrinth of the dying."

"Can that be done?"

"Anything is possible. Now be quiet. It is enough to risk our lives for a purpose. For idle chatter it is stupidity."

"Is there.. ?" Sol restrained himself from laughing aloud. He had been about to ask if there were danger in the ritual. What could be more dangerous than being out here after roll call, shrouded only by the night and threatened by the constant sweep of the searchlights. If the Nazis so much as suspected the performance of a Kabbalistic ritual inside Sachsenhausen...

"I'm ready," he whispered, though for what he could not imagine. "What do you want me to do?"

"Lie flat on your belly. That way, if you must cry out, the ground will muffle the noise. I will put my hands on your head and keep them there until I have removed the demon."

If there is one, Sol thought, lying down.

The searchlights passed again and he waited for the rabbi to begin...what? An exorcism in a charnel house! The incongruity of it was absurd. "Aren't you afraid it will enter
you?"
he asked.

"It wouldn't dare." Moving soundlessly, the rabbi straddled Solomon's back. "I'm sorry there is no time for niceties." His face was so close that his warm breath raised the hairs on Solomon's neck.

"You are named after Solomon, the wise king and arch magician of the Hebrews." The rabbi was panting, bearing down hard. "He created the incantation I am about to use. When you are ready, repeat it with me until I tell you to stop:
Lofaham, Solomon, Iyouel, Iyisebaiyu--
Leave this man and give yourself to..."

"Lofaham, Solomon, Iyouel, Iyisebaiyu..."

"Don't stop! When I feel the dybbuk coming, I am going to use an ancient Hebraic incantation. Take no notice. You keep repeating those four words...."

The taste of bile filled Sol's mouth and a wave of nausea engulfed him. He saw, again, some of the people in his visions--a woman, eyes anguished, begging to die. A blanket-robed old man, lashes and brows furred with frost, kneeling in the snow beside the frozen body of a young soldier. The Ethiopian, staring unmoving at the disemboweled body of his ancestor.

"Prepare yourself," the rabbi said softly. "If it is in you, it will fight to stay there."

More than anything else in the world, Sol wanted to put an end to this. Then he thought of Hans Hannes Fink lying mutilated on a stainless steel table, and he chanted the words of that other Solomon over and over, until he could hear only the ragged sound of his own voice, feel nothing but the throbbing in his head, see nothing but the sweep of the searchlight.

"Shabriri
--Diminish!" the rabbi commanded.

Silence. The soft pad of a prisoner's bare feet.

"Are you in pain?" the rabbi whispered, his voice gentle.

Sol felt the dirt beneath his cheek...and nothing else.

The searchlights swept by, catching the crossbar where the hanging men had ceased their movements. He stared at their bodies.

"Say the words again."

"Lofaham, Solomon--"

"Stop." The rabbi removed his hands. "All I can do for you, Solomon Freund, is ask for God's blessing. You had a dybbuk in you once. It is no longer there, but I believe it remains flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood. Whatever is in you
now
was always yours--and always will be." Very softly he said, "Let us pray together."

Replacing his hands lightly on Solomon's head, he began the traditional blessing:
"Boruch Ato Adonoy, Elohaynoo Melech Hoolom.
Blessed art Thou, 0 Lord our God, King of the Universe..."

Flooded with memories, Sol heard little more until the final words of the prayer.
May the Lord make His countenance to shine upon you and bring you peace. Amen.

More at peace with himself than he had been in a long time, Sol returned to his barracks. He went straight to the corner that held the noose and unhooked it from its nail. Holding it firmly, he mounted the stool. With his head touching the rafter, he looked out across the camp. The other barracks lay like a series of crypts in a moonlit cemetery. Would God forgive him this act?--and what, he wondered, lay beyond the moon's gray-gold shroud? Some other reality? Or would he at last attain that state of complete nothingness that called to him like a teat to a baby lamb.

Certainly the act of dying no longer held any great mystery. A body was a body--nothing more. He would be stacked in the morgue, and Misha and the other boys who were put to work there would search his orifices for valuables. The Nazis allowed a noose per barracks out of expedience, not mercy. Each dead Jew made the Führer's task easier. Nevertheless, suicide was not popular on camp reports; Schmidt would certify "death due to accidental strangulation" or "suffocation as the result of pneumonia."
 

He closed the curtain and tested the rope. It held firm. Pulse racing, he put the noose over his head. The knot cuddled against the back of his neck. He fondled it. Where best to place it? he wondered. Where it lay now, it might cause him to twist and struggle several more seconds than necessary.