Child of the Light (26 page)

Miriam looked up to see Erich crossing the street. Please, Erich, she prayed. No more fuss about Achilles. They had already argued enough. First Erich had said he wanted to take the dog to the camp. Sol reminded him that the animal could not be kenneled there, since Erich had stolen it from the camp in the first place--a fact Miriam had not known. A compromise was reached; come the new year, Vlad would move onto the estate to act as caretaker--and to finish writing his novel. The dog would belong to Erich but would remain at the estate, where he could visit her any time he pleased.

"Erich! Hurry--there's not much time!" Miriam called out from the doorway.

Erich stopped in mid-street. He lifted his hand in a tentative wave and, ignoring the traffic, turned around and rushed back into the apartment building.

"What now?" Sol said.

"Maybe we had better go and find out or I'll miss my train." By now they were all gathered on the sidewalk and she was, once again, precariously close to tears. "Vlad, go. Please." She raised herself up on her toes, kissed him quickly on the cheek, and dropped to her haunches next to Achilles. "Don't forget me, Killi." She hugged the dog.

Quickly, without looking back, she crossed the street, Sol close behind her. They ran into the building, up the stairs, and into the Weisser flat.

"I was going to put it on for you, but...I've changed my mind." Erich stood at the window of his room, his back to them. His uniform was laid out on his bed. Miriam sat down heavily and stared at it. "You hate it--don't you!" He did not turn around.

"I hate what it stands for," Miriam said quietly.

"I'm going to change all that." Erich's voice was deadly calm. "You wait and see if I don't." He looked back out the window. "I'm not going to spend my life in that cigar shop, waiting on people who think they're better than I am." His face hardened. "Go now--both of you!"

"Erich--"

He turned to face her. "You'll come home, Miriam."
 
His voice was still calm, and surprisingly soft. "I will be here."

"Will you write?"

"I'll--try. I'm not much good at that."

She wanted to kiss him one more time, but she did not. "I may never come back." Her voice was almost a whisper.

"You'll be back." Erich was looking at Sol. "One day, Miri, you'll have to make a choice--"

"Perhaps I will choose someone else," she said.

He smiled, though the smile did not reach his eyes. "I don't think so," he said quietly. "It will always be the three of us, tied together..."
 
He let his voice trail off and turned back to the window. "You'd better go."

When they were in the limo, Miriam took Sol's hand. They had not spoken since leaving Erich's room.

"Perhaps I should not come to the station either," Sol said.

Miriam tightened her grip on his hand. We have never embraced, you and I, she thought, hearing the echo of Erich's words.
One day, Miri, you'll have to make a choice...the three of us.

"Will you miss me, Sol?"

"Would I miss my right arm if they cut it off?"

"Will
you
write?"

"Do you want me to?"

She laughed softly. "Would I miss my right arm if they cut it off?"

With a sureness that surprised her, he put his arms around her and kissed her. She returned his kiss, tentatively at first, then with a warmth that shocked her.

"I've never said this before because I didn't want you to laugh at me." He sat back against the leather, but did not release her from his embrace. "But now...I love you, Miri. I always will."

She leaned against him, filled with a sense of wonder at how right this felt.

"Always,"
she said softly, "sounds like a very long time."

"I have and know no other blood than German, no other voice, no other people than German. Banish me from German soil, I will remain German, and nothing changes.... My People and each of my friends have the right and the duty to correct me, should they find me inadequate."

Walther Rathenau

Foreign Minister l922,

letter January 23, l916.

September 1933

Sol looked from the profusion of geraniums bordering the patio of the Tiergarten café to the trees beyond. Already it was September. The trees were almost bare and the earth was a carpet of leaves and acorns. To him it seemed only yesterday that the scent of May lilacs hung in the air.

"Beautiful, isn't it!" He looked across the table at Erich and wondered what had happened to the years.

"The Führer loves nature, doesn't he, girls?" Erich leaned down and petted his two German shepherds. Achilles, lying like a bunched blanket against his legs, lifted her head and gave a contented
ruuff
. Taurus, the younger dog, sitting with ears perked, appeared not to respond to the affection except to shake her head, dog tag clicking, after Erich was through.

"He's probably much too busy at the Reichstag to make time for oaks and elms." Sol was hard-pressed to keep the edge of sarcasm out of his voice.

"He'll be here," Erich said.

"I'm not waiting much longer."

Erich pounded the metal table with his fist. "Dammit, Solomon, he'll
be
here!"

"Schlemiel!"
Sol grabbed hold of the tankards of beer. "You wouldn't want to stain your precious uniform, would you?"

Erich's face reddened. He gripped the table edge as if he were about to vault it like a gymnastics horse. "I've warned you not to speak Yiddish in public," he whispered, glancing at the threesome who had just arrived and stood waiting to be seated. "Even one word is dangerous!" He lowered his voice still further. "You're pushing your luck, Solomon."

Sol looked at the threesome--an elegantly dressed couple and a tall silver-haired man in a blue-serge suit who stood behind them, a hard feral smile on his face. He kept one hand possessively on the woman's shoulder and the other on the man's while he surveyed the Biergarten.

"Who's the one with the silver hair?" Sol asked. "Anybody important?"

"Important, no. Dangerous, yes!" Erich whispered. "That's Otto Hempel. He's only an Untersturmführer, but he's SS. I don't have the power to protect you from people like that even if I do outrank him." Erich clutched Sol's wrist. "Watch out.
Please."

"I'll hold my tongue if you hold your temper." Sol pulled his hand away. "Maybe you should befriend Hempel. You serve the same king, after all."

Erich ignored Sol's mocking tone. "The only people he wants to get close to, other than the High Command, are boys--bent over with their pants down. Goddamned queers are worse than whores." His voice was laced with disgust. "I hate immoral people!"

He glowered and sipped his beer. Sol watched Achilles wolf down a bockwurst that had rolled off the table during Erich's outburst. Taurus took no notice. Like Erich and me, Sol thought. Erich, so quick to seize any opportunity that he claims will help our families weather the Nazi storm, while I wait and watch.

Deciding to give the Chancellor ten more minutes, he listened to the threesome's conversation.

"They're all the same." The woman was addressing the shorter man. "Take that French philosopher, Bergson, and that renegade Jew--whatshisname?--the one who emigrated recently?" She tossed the tail of her narrow boa angrily around her neck.

"Einstein?" The man sounded bored.

"Right. The one who said you can bend light or something? I mean, who cares? Only a Jew would be interested in such foolishness. So what do the other Jews do? Give him a chair at the university. Does he stay there? No! Takes off for North America. To tell them our secrets, no doubt.
Our
secrets.
German
secrets."

"Eavesdropping again, Solomon?" Erich asked. "I think you look upon it as sport--though from the sounds of it, you'd be better off not listening."

"Same old argument," Sol said impatiently. "Always the Jews. We've conspired with the Communists to create
Kultur-Bolshevismus
. We're trying to rot Germany's moral fiber by corrupting its scientific and artistic institutions. Such absurdity would almost be funny if so many people didn't take it seriously."

He gave a sad smile as the woman started in on the architect Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus Movement.

"Just don't listen," Erich said. "Don't be a masochist."

"How can I help but listen?"

"All that glass and concrete," the woman said. "The building has no character. Much like you, my darling!" She removed a shoe and, balancing on one foot, dumped out a stone. "As for your wonderful ideas!
 
Let's go for a walk, he says. It might improve your temperament! Ridiculous! Walking is for Jews and peasants. Besides, there's nothing wrong with my temperament that a good
man
couldn't cure!"

"What can it matter to you how something's built?" the shorter man asked in an even tone, as if the intimation that his manhood left something to be desired was unworthy of his attention.

"It matters because it's decadent!"
 
The woman held onto her anger like a cat with a bird in its mouth. "Like those vulgar American skyscrapers. You can't tell the front from the back."

"Cubism and the concept of the multi-sided universe are simply reflections of the times."

"Nonsense! Your fancy theories reflect nothing but radicals and Jews, wanting to change everything. Like the roof of that monstrosity--the Bauhaus! It's flat, for God's sake! A flat roof in the Fatherland! It's unChristian! UnGerman!"

"Not to mention impractical, since it's likely to collapse under the first snow," the SS man added.

"That's right.
You
tell him, Otto," she said to the second lieutenant. "If Franz won't listen to reason, maybe
you
can make him understand."

"Perhaps you should calm yourself, Helga, before you bring on another migraine," Hempel said. "As for me, I do my best not to think." He raised his hand and snapped his fingers for a waitress. "It muddies the emotions."

The waitress, a girl of no more than seventeen, offered a choice of tables, one within view of Erich and Sol, the other in a prime spot around the corner and overlooking the lake with its weeping willows, swans, and blanket-wrapped boaters. The woman, appearing to seethe from her companion's treatment of her, indicated a preference for the table closer to Sol and Erich. Seating herself in Erich's line of vision, she arched an eyebrow, smiled, and draped her calf-length skirt so her ankles were seen to best advantage.

Sol looked from her to Erich and tried to assess him through her eyes. The young first lieutenant did look handsome in his uniform. Were it not for the mutilated hand, he would appear the perfect Aryan, as if he had stepped from one of the State-financed propaganda films at the Marmorhaus. The ribbons above his breast pocket added just the right touch of color, even though they represented completion of Abwehr military-security instruction and not gallantry in action. The neat mustache that graced his lip had surely stirred the heart of many a Fraülein on the parade field and at sports rallies in the Oranienburg grain fields.

"Ever have a woman like that?" Erich picked up his beer, toasted his admirer, and drank deeply.

Sol shook his head. "Have you?"

"She's no beer-and-bockwurst lay, I'll tell you that. You might try it some time. Do you good."

"Me?" Sol laughed.

"Why not? You're good-looking enough, in a Semitic kind of way. Lots of misguided women go for the dark brooding type. You can't spend the rest of your life moping after Miriam." He paused and his eyes darkened. "Have you heard from her lately?"

Sol shook his head. "I did write and tell her about the estate, but that was three months ago. Maybe more. Perhaps she never received the letter."

"Or perhaps she just doesn't care anymore. How long has it been since you heard from her--at least three years."

"We've both had birthday cards."

Erich laughed. "I'm sure Vladimir has too. She has a new life, Solomon. Face it. Do yourself a favor and get yourself one of those." He nodded in the direction of his admirer. "How old do you think she is? Forty? Forty-five?"

Sol shrugged, knowing that whatever he said would give Erich the opportunity for some acidic reply. When it came to Sol's shyness, Erich seemed unforgiving. As for his comments about Miriam, Erich's philandering was no indication that he had forgotten her, Sol thought. Different people used different ways to protect themselves; for Sol it was isolation, for Erich, just the opposite. That didn't mean a thing.

The woman leaned back, gave her order to the waitress, and made a limp-wristed motion with her hand. "Send the Gypsy to read our tea leaves. I wish to see if life has any excitement in store for me."

"I'm afraid she's unavailable, Fraülein," the girl said apologetically. "She says there is too much wind upon the water today for her power to be effective."

"Ridiculous!" The woman darted her gaze across the lake. "Not so much as a breeze. You bring her out here!"