Lycanthropos (4 page)

He was, of course, a coward of the civilized variety, possessed of a cowardice which is unique to the modern
world. A soldier who is terrified of the bombs exploding all
around him is not a coward; were he not terrified, he would
be either a fool or a madman. Someone who feels fear when confronted by a criminal
with a weapon is not a coward; neither is a woman who
feels fear when subjected to a sexual assault. Fear is a survival mechanism. Its total absence is indicative of emotional illness.

But a civilized coward like Gottfried von Weyrauch is
one whose devotion not only to his own survival but even to
his own freedom from inconvenience leads him to avoid
speaking the truth, even when he knows what the truth is and
knows that it needs to be spoken; to smile and nod and agree with people whom he knows to be both evil and dangerous, just because they are more powerful than he; to accept the
unacceptable, to deny the undeniable, to pretend not to know the obvious, to go about his business quietly and
unobtrusively, ignoring what he knows to be right and
allowing to exist without opposition what he knows to be
wrong.

As he placed his old copy of Søren Kierkegaard's
Gospel of
Suffering
down upon the surface of the desk in his study,
he reflected that Kierkegaard would have despised him. The Danish philosopher had spent his life battling the
fossilized established
Lutheran
Church
in defense of what he
perceived as Christian truth, much as Martin Luther himself had battled the corrupt Catholicism of the Renaissance centuries earlier. Weyrauch knew that had he lived in Kierkegaard's
Denmark
, he would have been one of those pastors who feared annoying the bishops, who would rather see Kierkegaard be censured than themselves be inconvenienced by supporting him. And had he lived in 16th century Germany, he would never have supported Luther during the Protestant Reformation... until, of course, the ruler of whatever German state he lived in decided to accept
Luther's reforms, at which time Weyrauch would have kept his
mouth shut and would have done what he was told.

He had been keeping his mouth shut and had been doing what he was told ever since Hitler and his thugs
had taken power in
Germany
eleven years before. He knew that
the Nazis were ignoramuses. He knew that the so-called
German
Church
under the leadership of the Reich Bishop was nothing more than a heretical sham Hitler had created
in an attempt to control the Protestant majority in the
population. He knew that as a Christian he should have been
one of the ministers who supported Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhöffer
and the others in the anti-Nazi
Confessional
Church
, the
true, legitimate
Protestant
Church
in
Germany
. He knew that he had a responsibility as a clergyman to speak out against
the tyranny and the corruption and the arrests and the
murders and the persecution and the concentration camps and the war machine of the Third Reich.

He did none of these things. He kept his mouth shut and
he did what he was told.

And though he despised himself for his cowardice, he made
no attempt to alter his behavior so as to raise his
self-esteem; for the reluctance to act when one knows that action is called for is of all forms of cowardice the most insidious and the least likely to be transcended.

Weyrauch closed the door of his study and walked out
toward the kitchen of the parsonage, where his wife would be
making breakfast. He was a man with a youngish face, fast
approaching middle age but still somehow boyish looking. His
watery brown eyes seemed forever fixed upon some private, inner sorrow, but his ready, toothy smile and ruddy complexion projected a permanent aura of good cheer. He was in all respects, physical as well as ontological, a man of the middle, without extremes. His light brown hair was thinning with age, but he was nowhere near bald. He was solid enough to indicate that he ate and drank well, but he
was far from portly. He was forty years old and looked
thirty to most people, until they learned his true age, at
which time they decided that he did indeed look forty. He was a man who did not attract attention to himself, and
that was one key to survival in Nazi Germany.

He sat down at the wooden table in the small, cluttered
but immaculately clean kitchen and smiled over at his wife Louisa, who was slicing the rich, black bread on a free standing chopping block beside the sink. "Good morning,
liebchen
," he said. "You certainly look lovely this
morning."

Louisa von Weyrauch shot him a cold, withering look, and
he fell immediately silent. He gazed down at his hands,
folded them on the table, and began to twiddle his thumbs.
Louisa piled the sliced bread onto a platter, carried it over to the table, and dropped it down upon the wooden surface with a loud and resounding thud. "Frau Neumann came over this morning to talk to you," she said, her voice even and unaffectionate. "You were taking your morning walk at the time. I told her to come back later." Louisa poured herself a cup of the ersatz concoction which passed for coffee in
Germany
in 1944. "She was very upset. Devastated, in fact."

"Why?" Weyrauch asked as he slapped some lard onto a
slice of bread, there being no butter. "What's wrong?"

"Her son Rudi was killed last week in
Norway
. The army
just informed her today." She sipped quietly from her coffee
cup.

"Oh, that's terrible," Weyrauch said. "The poor boy. He
was only...how old was he? Nineteen?"

"Eighteen," she corrected him. "Only in the army a few
months, and now he's dead, just like his father last year."

"Well," he sighed, "I must pay a visit later, a
condolence call. Rudi didn't come to church very often, but his mother always does." He paused and thought for a moment.
"
Norway
," he muttered. "I thought everything was quiet up there. I thought our problems were all in the east and the
south..."

"He was killed by a sniper," she interrupted. "For some
reason, people seem to object to having their countries
invaded and occupied."

"Yes, yes, of course," he muttered.

"And please don't talk about ‘our problems'," she went
on bitterly. "Our problem is our government. Our problem is that rabid animal in the Chancellery, not the resistance of
innocent conquered people." Her voice broke slightly, and
she seemed about to weep.

He reached over without thinking to touch her arm
comfortingly. "Now, now, my dear..."

She pulled her arm away and glared at him. "Why in God's
name are we still living here, Gottfried? If you don't have
the backbone to stand up to these people, why at least don't we leave the country?"

"Louisa, my dear, we've discussed this before. You know
as well as I do that I have responsibilities here in
Kappelburg. I can't just pack up and..."

"Oh, Gottfried, spare me the homily!" she spat. "You're
hiding behind your collar, just like you always do."

"That isn't fair, Louisa," he said softly, trying not
to become angry at her for speaking the words which he
himself so often thought.

"It isn't fair?!" she asked, her eyes wide with feigned
surprise. "It isn't fair?! Don't tell me that you've
suddenly developed a devotion to justice!"

"Louisa..." he muttered darkly.

"If you're content to bow and scrape to the Nazis,
that's all fine and good for you. But you could at least consider me for a moment." She leaned forward and shouted in
his face, "I want to leave
Germany
, Gottfried! I want to get
away from this insane asylum we live in!"

"And go where?" he asked, growing angry himself. They had had this conversation a hundred times. "And do what?"

"
Switzerland
," she said, as she always said. "Why can't
you try to get a parish in
Switzerland
? Good Lord, Gottfried, you hold a doctoral degree in Theology. Why can't you find a seminary to teach in? You're a doctor of medicine. Teach in a medical school, or start a practice! You have training in psychiatry, and Jung is in
Switzerland
. Go and work with
him!"

"Louisa," he said, "we can't just pack up and leave. It isn't that easy…"

"Not for a woman married to a man like you," she spat.
"When I think of what could have been..."

He threw the slice of bread down upon the table,
smearing the lard across the faded alpine table cloth.
"Louisa, stop!" he shouted. "I will not listen to your litany of regrets any longer!"

"And why not?" she demanded. "Do you expect me to believe that you don't run them through your mind yourself every day? Don't you wonder what our lives would have been like if we had gone to join Schweitzer in Africa after you
received your medical degree, like you always said you were
going to do?"

"Louisa..."

"Don't you feel ashamed of yourself when you hear the things that my
old friend Dietrich has been saying and doing?"

"Your precious Bonhöffer will end up in a concentration camp," he said. "You mark my words."

"Perhaps he will, and perhaps they'll kill him someday, but
he'll
die on his feet, not on his knees!"

"I kneel to no one!" he shouted.

"You don't have
to,"
she shouted back. "You're already
lying on your face, licking their feet!"

"Is it your great goal in life, Louisa, to be a young
widow? What on earth do you expect me to do? Preach against
the government from my pulpit? Try to kill the Führer?"

"Try to do something, Gottfried, anything! At the very least,
leave!
"

"I should point out, Louisa, that you talk a very good
resistance," he shouted. "I don't see you doing anything about the Nazis, other than making my life miserable."

"At least I'm willing to say that what is happening is wrong," she shouted back. "At least I have the intelligence
to want to get away from it. My God, Gottfried, don't you see what's happening to the world?"

"Yes, I see what's happening," he said coldly as he rose
from the table, leaving his meager breakfast uneaten. "The world is falling apart, as it always is, and I am trying to persevere and survive it."

"Oh, Gottfried," she sighed, her anger suddenly giving way to depression and despair. "Don't you have any
self-respect?"

"Of course I do," he muttered, walking to the door. "And I also have common sense." He walked from the kitchen, out through the parlor to the front door, and slammed it behind him.

Louisa closed her eyes and prayed silently for patience and self control. She was furious with her husband, as she
always was. He disgusted her, as he always did. And she felt
the same desperate helplessness she always felt after such conversations. And he had stung her by reminding her that, her ideals and ethics notwithstanding, she had done as little as he to oppose the Nazis.

I could leave Germany all
by myself, she thought, go to
Switzerland
alone. I could
contact Dietrich, try to help somehow, try to do something, something. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and covering her face with her hands. No I couldn't, she thought. I suppose that I'm just as frightened as
Gottfried, frightened of being alone, frightened of being
arrested, frightened of being killed. Perhaps I expect too
much of him, she thought. Perhaps by comparing him with
Dietrich, I'm holding him up to an impossible ideal. Perhaps at this stage of our lives there's nothing that we can do. When we were younger, when he was a young seminarian and I was a young humanities student, before Hitler was in power, before the Enabling Act that established the dictatorship, before the Nuremberg Laws that established official anti-Semitism, before the war...that was when we should have done something, that was when we should have tried to
...
tried to...

Her thought died unfinished. Should have done what? she
wondered, and felt a pang of guilt at the anger she felt for her husband. We supported the correct parties, she thought, I the Social Democrats and he the Progressives, two different parties but both opposed to Hitler and the Nationalists. I was too young to vote, but Gottfried voted, and we both campaigned and rallied and handed out
literature. What else could we have done, what else could he have done? Perhaps Gottfried is right. Perhaps all we can do
now is try to survive.