The Holocaust Opera (6 page)

I grabbed hold of its small, furry mass firmly with both hands, attempting to dislodge it. The kitten came back with renewed fervor, its power nearly supernatural, shredding my arms and lunging at my face. Its face was contorted with evil, its eyes bulging madly. I closed my hands around its tiny neck and squeezed with all my strength until it went still. With revulsion, I threw the evil, now dead, thing into the bedroom and slammed the door shut, standing with my back against it, breathing in harsh gasps and trembling uncontrollably. My arms and breasts were bleeding. I ripped off my top and surveyed the damage. It was extensive. In the bathroom, I hastily cleaned the wounds with a cold, wet washcloth before dousing them with hydrogen peroxide. I dialed Jeremiah’s number, sobbing hysterically.

* * * *

He answered almost immediately and I could tell by the sound of his voice that he knew. “My God, Jeremiah,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t.”

“You son of a bitch!”

“You must come quickly. I have something to show you.”

I was there in just under thirty minutes.

Jeremiah was a basket case. When he got a look at me, he stopped crying, staring. “He made me do it,” he said.

“You bastard!”

“You don’t understand. I had no choice.”

“You’re a liar!”

“Come,” he said, trying to take my hand. I refused to relinquish it, pulling away from his advances with revulsion. I followed him at a distance as he led the way from his basement apartment up to a second floor landing. I followed him down a long echoing corridor where at the end he stopped, looking furtively around him before unlocking a solid hardwood door with #2 on it. He ushered me quickly through the opening and into a small, unpretentious, but neatly kept kitchen. The room was quite dark, the shades at the windows drawn. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I could see well enough to know the place was immaculate. The cupboards were clean and there were no dishes in sight. The colorful linoleum looked like it had been scrubbed recently. He closed the door gently and relocked it, standing with his back against it, breathing erratically.

“We must be quick,” he said. “I cannot take the chance that he should slip through while the door is open.”

“Slip through?” I said.
“Who?
What on earth are you talking about?”

“Shh,” he said, putting a finger to his lips. He led the way through an archway into a spacious room that had probably once been a parlor. Heavy drapes at the windows kept the room in a perpetual state of shadow. Jeremiah flipped a wall switch and the room lit up. There was a white grand piano in the center of the room. Sitting on a bench side by side in front of it, their heads bowed like school kids napping at their desks, were two corpses. One was obviously a man, for he wore a black tuxedo, the other, a woman, wearing a white evening gown. There was no odor. The bodies had long since passed the point of decomposition, now they were merely leathery-looking husks inside the tattered and moldy garments. Each had sharp objects that resembled knitting needles protruding from their ears.

My hand went to my mouth as the gasp convulsed from my throat. “Oh, God, no!” I shrieked, stepping back away from that dreadful sight. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Jeremiah, who
are
they?”

“My parents,” Jeremiah said with no emotion in his voice.

I stared at him, eyes wide, and began backing toward the archway. “You
knew
about this?” I sobbed, feeling the hysteria swelling like a tide in me. The scream ripped from my throat before I could stop its expulsion. I tripped over my own feet and went down, landing on my ass out in the kitchen, still screaming, clawing to get away from that terrible room of death. Jeremiah lunged at me, grabbing me roughly, yanking me to my feet. I began to kick and thrash. His eyes were wild, but he was not trying to harm me. This much was clear. He just wanted me to shut up. He was as frightened as I was. I could see it in his eyes. The fight went out of me and I collapsed in his arms, sobbing.

“Please,” he said. “You must be quiet. We do not want to draw him here.”

“Him?
Who the
fuck
is
him?”

“Downstairs,” Jeremiah whispered. His eyes were swirling with panic. “I’ll explain everything.”

“Explain?”
I said, wrenching myself free of his grasp, my voice filled with incredulity. “You let your parents rot here, while you sat downstairs writing evil music, and you want to
explain?
”

“I didn’t have a choice. It was their wish to be locked up and left here like this. It was their way of protecting me.”

“Are you fucking
kidding
me?”

He shook his head.

“But, why, Jeremiah? My God,
why?”

* * * *

We left the apartment in pretty much the same manner as we’d entered it, skulking, furtive, like thieves stealing away from the scene of a crime. Jeremiah led the way back down to his apartment. I followed him at a distance, repelled by him and everything he touched.

In his apartment, I sat down uneasily, my body rigid. I no longer trusted him, realizing that everything we had—or rather, everything I’d deluded myself into believing we had—was a lie. He sat down opposite me, forming thoughts.

“You see this scar?” he said after a long moment. I nodded. “It happened six months before I met you. You see, I...” Jeremiah paused watching me carefully. There was an embarrassed, almost apologetic look on his face. “You see, Roxanne, I knew there was something wrong with the compositions—”

“You
knew?
Jesus Christ, Jeremiah, why didn’t you tell me—?”

“Please,” he said. “I couldn’t. Let me explain. I was...seriously trying to abandon the project.”

“Bullshit!” I yelled. I was fuming, angrier than I’d ever been in my life and terrified all at once. I wanted to pound him with my fists, I wanted to
kill
him, but I stopped myself, knowing that I must, knowing that I had to understand what I’d gotten myself into. I felt quite strongly that I was trapped, that my very survival depended on the creative use of my brain, not my animal emotions.

“I came up out of a sound sleep.” Jeremiah continued. “I was in a total panic and holding my hand to my face. There was blood everywhere, on the bed, running down between my fingers, and I could feel that there was a deep wound on my cheek. Then I saw him.
He
was
there
, in my bedroom, hovering above me like some fucking demonic ghost. There was a jagged knife in his hand and it was smeared with blood.
My blood.
His eyes were bright red and glowing, like two burning coals. His form was human, but he had these two massive horns growing out of his head. He was evil, Roxanne, I swear. The most evil thing I’d ever seen. The most evil thing I’d ever felt.”

I just stared at Jeremiah, all emotion drained from me.

“Please, Roxanne, you’ve got to believe me. You see, my parents knew that if they died in that terrible way, and locked themselves away in that dark apartment, that it would confuse him, and that there was a good chance that their actions would provide protection for me indefinitely. I don’t know how they knew that, but they did. It worked, until now. Something’s happened. Something’s changed. I think he suspects that they’re dead.”

I continued to stare at Jeremiah, totally speechless.

“I swear, I didn’t know what they’d done until it was over,” Jeremiah said. “I came home from classes at Juilliard one day five years ago and found them like that. They did it for my protection.”

“How in hell would dying up there like that protect you?”

Jeremiah opened a drawer in a stand next to where he sat and extracted a ream of papers. I looked down and saw writing on them. “Here,” he said, handing the papers to me. “It’s all in there.”

I took the papers with a shaking hand, staring at the writing. I was unable to make any immediate sense of it. My mind was mush, and the scratches on my breasts and arms were stinging and throbbing like hell. I looked back at Jeremiah in confusion and his features distorted through the tears in my eyes.

“He said the cut was child’s play,” Jeremiah said. “A warning, that if I did not give him what he wanted, he would come back and gut me like he’d gutted my grandfather.”

“Who the
hell
are you talking about?”

“Schroeder. The pet shop man. Only his real name isn’t Schroeder. He lied about that.”

I was shaking and sobbing now, nearly hysterical. I knew that I had to get control of myself, but I just couldn’t stop. I sobbed for what seemed like a long time, bent over, my head cradled in my arms. Jeremiah made no attempt to comfort me. He just sat there. Either he was in shock or he was the most insensitive bastard I’d ever known. It was okay, I suppose. I no longer wanted his comfort. I no longer wanted anything from him. I felt cold, and distant, and confused.

“Who is he, Jeremiah?” I managed, finally, in a voice that was merely a husky whisper, but even as I made the inquiry, I thought I knew his name. I’d been reading about him in the books on the death camps. He’d caught my attention early on in my studies, and I’d read everything I could find on the man and his life. It was as if I’d somehow been purposely drawn to his dark story. I could not understand how it could be so, but dear God, it was
.
I’d known moments after leaving the pet shop yesterday. I just hadn’t admitted it to myself until now. The white gloves, the bushy mustache, the impeccable clothing, the handsome face with the cruel eyes, the reference to the Zoo. It all added up to one terrible man, a monster really; unequaled in the annals of mankind’s propensity to be cruel. He should be dead, but if Jeremiah was telling the truth, then he had somehow eluded God’s final judgment.

“Josef Mengele,” Jeremiah whispered. “His name is Josef Mengele, The Angel of Death.”

It was a long moment before I regained my senses. I knew, and yet hearing his name still shocked me to the foundations of my being. At the library, I’d learned that Doctor Josef Mengele, the butcher of Auschwitz, fled from Poland on January 17, 1945, as the Soviet army advanced toward Berlin. A few years later, he slipped out of Germany through Italy where he boarded a ship bound for Argentina.

At the time, no one except the nation of Israel had been interested in his capture, and he was mostly forgotten about by a world more eager to put the brutal past behind it than it was to pursue and punish the guilty.

Eventually, Israel gave up the search. Within a decade after the war, holocaust stories had become unpopular in Israel. By then, warriors had become more honored than victims. There is now even a
prejudiced
approach to holocaust survivors. They were treated as scattered rejects and remnants of an unhealthy mentality. From sheep to the slaughter, Jews transformed themselves into proud warriors who refused to be intimidated.

I’d also learned that bones believed to be Mengele’s were dug up in Brazil in 1985. It was reported that he’d died in a drowning accident there in 1979. Forensic tests on the skeletal remains were inconclusive, however.

“I swear, I didn’t know it was him yesterday until he mentioned my parents,” Jeremiah said. “He didn’t look like the thing in my bedroom, but it
was
him. I’m sure of that now. Somehow, he’s come back in human form. He’s evil, I tell you. He’s some sort of shape-changer, but he’s worse than that. Somehow, he can move freely between the world of the dead and this world. He can become different things and different people. I can’t explain how, but I know that it’s true.”

“No, no, Jeremiah,” I said, shaking my head. “You must be mistaken. That
was
Mengele at the pet shop yesterday, wasn’t it? In the flesh? I mean,
alive.
That was no trick. He
wanted
you to know it was him.”

“Yes, he wanted me to know it was him, and no, he wasn’t alive.”

I shook my head again. “That man yesterday wasn’t dead, Jeremiah,” I insisted. “He was very much alive. He somehow escaped death. We saw him. We talked to him. I
touched
him. Isn’t that right? Isn’t it possible that he somehow survived?” I was grasping like hell for a sane explanation to this nightmare, even as the memory of touching that man’s hand made my skin crawl.

“No!” Jeremiah said with finality. “He’s dead. At least the mortal part of him is. If you went there today, you’d find a music store, not a pet shop. It was all a trick.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“Because my father killed him,” Jeremiah said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “My father, Aaron Gideon, he’s the man who killed The Angel of Death.”

* * * *

I blinked, staring at Jeremiah. “My God, Jeremiah. Why? How?”

It was a long moment before Jeremiah replied to my inquiry, and even then he didn’t answer me directly. “Do you believe that a human being can be inherently evil, Roxanne?”

“Christ, I don’t know.”

“Evil comes in many guises and has called itself by many names,” Jeremiah said. “Lucifer, Cain, Grendel. Every faith has its name for evil. The victims and the survivors of Auschwitz—my father included—believed Mengele to be the earthly manifestation of Azrael, the true Angel of Death. The Talmud, the Jewish Holy Book, has references that equate The Angel of Death with Satan, implying that he is evil rather than good. Azrael in Hebrew means, ‘Assistant or helper to the gods,’ thus, angel. It is said that he is ‘forever writing in a large book and forever erasing what he writes.’ What he writes is the birth of man, what he erases is the name of man at death. This is what Mengele did at Auschwitz. He erased the names of millions of good human beings from the earth.”