The Keep

by F. Paul Wilson

  “What do you want of me?” Papa asked.

  “We are to bring you to the rail station and accompany you to the junction at Campina where you will be met by representatives of the Third Reich. From there—”

  “Germans? But why?”

  “It is not for you to ask! From there—”

  “Which means they don’t know either,” Magda heard her father mutter.

  “—you will be escorted to the Dinu Pass.”

  Papa’s face mirrored Magda’s surprise at their destination, but he recovered quickly.

  “I would love to oblige you, gentlemen,” Papa said, spreading his twisted fingers, encased as always in cotton gloves, “for there are few places in the world more fascinating than the Dinu Pass. But as you can plainly see, I’m a bit infirm at the moment.”

  The two Iron Guards stood silent, indecisive, eyeing the old man in the chair. Magda could sense their reactions. Papa looked like an animated skeleton with his thin, glossy, dead-looking skin, his balding head fringed with wisps of white hair, his stiff fingers looking thick and crooked and gnarled even through the gloves, and his arms and neck so thin there seemed to be no flesh over the bones. He looked frail, fragile, brittle. He looked eighty. Yet their papers said to find a man of fifty-six.

  “Still you must come,” the leader said.

  “He can’t!” Magda cried. “He’ll die on a trip like that!”

  The two intruders glanced at each other. Their thoughts were easy to read: They had been told to find Professor Cuza and see that he got to the Dinu Pass as quickly as possible. And alive, obviously. Yet the man before them did not look as if he would make it to the station.

  “If I have the expert services of my daughter along,” she heard her father say, “I shall perhaps be all right.”

  “No, Papa! You can’t!” What was he saying?

  “Magda…these men mean to take me. If I am to survive, you must come along with me.” He looked up at her, his eyes commanding. “You must.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  She could not imagine what he had in mind, but she had to obey. He was her father. He studied her face.

  “Do you realize the direction in which we will be traveling, my dear?”

  He was trying to tell her something, trying to key something in her mind. Then she remembered her dream of a week ago, and the half-packed suitcase still sitting under her bed.

  “North!”

  Their two Iron Guard escorts were seated across the aisle in the passenger car, engaged in low conversation when they were not trying to visually pierce Magda’s heavy clothing. Papa had the window seat, his hands double gloved, leather over cotton, and folded in his lap. Bucharest was sliding away behind them. A fifty-three-mile trip by rail lay ahead—thirty-five miles to Ploiesti and eighteen miles north of there to Campina. After that the going would be rough. She prayed it would not be too much for him.

  “Do you know why I had them bring you along?” he said in his dry voice.

  “No, Papa. I see no purpose in either of us going. You could have got out of it. All they need do is have their superiors look at you and they’d know you’re not fit to travel.”

  “They wouldn’t care. And I’m fitter than I look—not well, by any standard, but certainly not the walking cadaver I appear to be.”

  “Don’t talk like that!”

  “I stopped lying to myself long ago, Magda. When they told me I had rheumatoid arthritis, I said they were wrong. And they were: I had something worse. But I’ve accepted what’s happening to me. There’s no hope, and there’s not that much more time. So I think I should make the best of it.”

  “You don’t have to rush it by allowing them to drag you up to the Dinu Pass!”

  “Why not? I’ve always loved the Dinu Pass. It’s as good a place to die as any. And they were going to take me no matter what. I’m wanted up there for some reason and they are intent on getting me there, even in a hearse.” He looked at her closely. “But do you know why I told them I had to have you along?”

  Magda considered the question. Her father was ever the teacher, ever playing Socrates, asking question after question, leading his listener to a conclusion. Magda often found it tedious and tried to reach the conclusion as swiftly as possible. But she was too tense at the moment for even a half-hearted attempt at playing along.

  “To be your nurse, as usual,” she snapped. “What else?”

  She regretted the words as soon as she uttered them, but her father seemed not to notice. He was too intent on what he wanted to say to take offense.

  “Yes!” he said, lowering his voice. “That’s what I want them to think. But it’s really your chance to get out of the country! I want you to come to the Dinu Pass with me, but when you get the chance—at the first opportunity—I want you to run off and hide in the hills.”

  “Papa, no!”

  “Listen to me!” he said, leaning his face toward her ear. “This chance will never come again. We’ve been in the Alps many times. You know the Dinu Pass well. Summer’s coming. You can hide for a while and then make your way south.”

  “To where?”

  “I don’t know—anywhere! Just get yourself out of the country. Out of Europe! Go to America! To Turkey! To Asia! Anywhere, but go!”

  “A woman traveling alone in wartime,” Magda said, staring at her father and trying to keep her voice from sounding scornful. He wasn’t thinking clearly. “How far do you think I’d get?”

  “You must try!” His lips trembled.

  “Papa, what’s wrong?”

  He looked out the window for a long time, and when he finally spoke his voice was barely audible.

  “It’s all over for us. They’re going to wipe us off the face of the Continent.”

  “Who?”

  “Us! Jews! There’s no hope left for us in Europe. Perhaps somewhere else.”

  “Don’t be so—”

  “It’s true! Greece has just surrendered! Do you realize that since they attacked Poland a year and a half ago they haven’t lost a battle? No one has been able to stand up to them for more than six weeks! Nothing can stop them! And that madman who leads them intends to eradicate our kind from the face of the earth! You’ve heard the tales from Poland—it’s soon going to be happening here! The end of Romanian Jewry has been delayed only because that traitor Antonescu and the Iron Guard have been at each other’s throats. But it seems they’ve settled their differences during the past few months, so it won’t be long now.”

  “You’re wrong, Papa,” Magda said quickly. This kind of talk terrified her. “The Romanian people won’t allow it.”

  He turned on her, his eyes blazing. “‘Won’t allow it’? Look at us! Look at what has happened so far! Did anyone protest when the government began the ‘Romanianization’ of all property and industry in the hands of Jews? Did a single one of my colleagues at the university—trusted friends for decades!—so much as question my dismissal? Not one! Not one! And has one of them even stopped by to see how I am?” His voice was beginning to crack. “Not one!”

  He turned his face back toward the window and was silent.

  Magda wished for something to say to make it easier for him, but no words came. She knew that tears would be streaking his cheeks now if his disease had not rendered his eyes incapable of forming them. When he spoke again, he had himself once more under control, but he kept his gaze directed at the flat green farmland rolling by.

  “And now we are on this train, under guard of Romanian fascists, on our way to be delivered into the hands of German fascists. We are finished!”

  She watched the back of her father’s head. How bitter and cynical he had become. But then, why not? He had a disease that was slowly tying his body into knots, distorting his fingers, turning his skin to wax paper, drying his eyes and mouth, making it increasingly hard for him to swallow. As for his career—despite years at the university as an unchallenged authority on Romanian folklore, despite the fact that he was next in li
ne as head of the department of history, he had been unceremoniously fired. Oh, they said it was because his advancing debility made it necessary, but Papa knew it was because he was a Jew. He had been discarded like so much trash.

  And so: His health was failing, he had been removed from the pursuit of Romanian history—the thing he loved most—and now he had been dragged from his home. And above and beyond all that was the knowledge that engines designed for the destruction of his race had been constructed and were already operating with grim efficiency in other countries. Soon it would be Romania’s turn.

  Of course he’s bitter! she thought. He has every right to be!

  And so do I. It’s my race, my heritage, too, they wish to destroy. And soon, no doubt, my life.

  No, not her life. That couldn’t happen. She could not accept that. But they had certainly destroyed any hope she had held of being something more than secretary and nursemaid to her father. Her music publisher’s sudden about-face was proof enough of that.

  Magda felt a heaviness in her chest. She had learned the hard way since her mother’s death eleven years ago that it was not easy being a woman in this world. It was hard if you were married, and harder still if you were not, for there was no one to cling to, no one to take your side. It was almost impossible for any woman with an ambition outside the home to be taken seriously. If you were married, you should go back home; if you were not, then something was doubly wrong with you. And if you were Jewish…

  She glanced quickly to the area where the two Iron Guards sat. Why am I not permitted the desire to leave my mark on this world? Not a big mark…a scratch would do. My book of songs…it would never be famous or popular, but perhaps someday a hundred years from now someone would come across a copy and play one of the songs. And when the song is over, the player will close the cover and see my name…and I’ll still be alive in a way. The player will know that Magda Cuza passed this way.

  She sighed. She wouldn’t give up. Not yet. Things were bad and would probably get worse. But it wasn’t over. It was never over as long as one could hope.

  Hope, she knew, was not enough. There had to be something more; just what that might be she didn’t know. But hope was the start.

  The train passed an encampment of brightly colored wagons circled around a smoldering central fire. Papa’s pursuit of Romanian folklore had led him to befriend the Gypsies, allowing him to tap their mother lode of oral tradition.

  “Look!” she said, hoping the sight would lift his spirits. He loved those people so. “Gypsies.”

  “I see,” he said without enthusiasm. “Bid them farewell, for they are as doomed as we are.”

  “Stop it, Papa!”

  “It’s true. The Rom are an authoritarian’s nightmare. And because of that, they too will be eliminated. They are free spirits, drawn to crowds and laughter and idleness. The fascist mentality cannot tolerate their sort; their place of birth was the square of dirt that happened to lie under their parents’ wagon on the moment of their first breath; they have no permanent address, no permanent place of employment. And they don’t even use one name with any reliable frequency, for they have three: a public name for the gadjé, another for use among their tribe members, and a secret one whispered in their ear at birth by their mother to confuse the Devil, should he come for them. To the fascist mind they are an abomination.”

  “Perhaps,” Magda said. “But what of us? Why are we an abomination?”

  He turned away from the window at last. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really knows. We are good citizens wherever we go. We are industrious, we promote trade, we pay our taxes. Perhaps it is our lot. I just don’t know.” He shook his head. “I’ve tried to make sense of it, but I cannot. Just as I cannot make sense of this forced trip to the Dinu Pass. The only thing of interest there is the keep, but that is of interest only to the likes of you and me. Not to Germans.”

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. Before long, he was dozing, snoring gently. He slept all the way past the smoking towers and tanks of Ploiesti, awakened briefly as they passed to the east of Floresti, then dozed again. Magda spent the time worrying about what lay ahead for them, and what the Germans could possibly want with her father in the Dinu Pass.

  As the plains drifted by outside the window, Magda drifted into a familiar reverie, one in which she was married to a handsome man, loving and intelligent. They would have great wealth, but it would not go for things like jewelry and fine clothes—those were toys to Magda and she could see no use or meaning in owning them—but for books and curios. They would dwell in a house that would resemble a museum, stuffed with artifacts of value only to them. And that house would lie in a far-off land where no one would know or care that they were Jewish. Her husband would be a brilliant scholar and she would be widely known and respected for her musical arrangements. There would be a place for Papa, too, and money enough to get him the best doctors and nurses, giving her time to herself to work on her music.

  A small, bitter smile curved Magda’s lips. An elaborate fantasy—and that was all it ever would be. It was too late for her. She was thirty-one, well past the age when any eligible man would consider her a suitable wife and prospective mother of his children. All she was good for now was somebody’s mistress. And that, of course, she could never accept.

  Once, a dozen years ago, there had been someone…Mihail…a student of Papa’s. They had been attracted to each other. Something might have come of that. But then Mother had died and Magda had stayed close to Papa—so close that Mihail had been left out. She had had no choice; Papa had been utterly shattered by Mother’s death and it was Magda who had held him together.

  Magda fingered the slim gold band on her right ring finger. It had been her mother’s. How different things would have been if she hadn’t died.

  Once in a while Magda thought of Mihail. He had married someone else…they had three children now. Magda had only Papa.

  Everything changed with Mother’s death. Magda couldn’t explain how it happened, but Papa grew to be the center of her life. Although she had been surrounded by men in those days, she took no notice of them. Their attentions and advances had lain like beads of water on a glass figurine, unappreciated, unabsorbed, leaving not so much as a hazy ring when they evaporated.

  She spent the intervening years suspended between a desire to be somehow extraordinary and a longing for all the very ordinary things that most other women took for granted. And now it was too late. There was really nothing ahead for her—she saw that more clearly every day.

  And yet it could have been so different! So much better! If only Mother hadn’t died. If only Papa hadn’t fallen sick. If only she hadn’t been born a Jew. She could never admit the last to Papa. He’d be furious—and crushed—to know she felt that way. But it was true. If they were not Jews, they would not be on this train; Papa would still be at the university and the future would not be a yawning chasm full of darkness and dread with no exit.

  The plains gradually turned hilly and the tracks began to slope upward. The sun sat atop the Alps as the train climbed the final slope to Campina. As they passed the towers of the smaller Steaua refinery, Magda began to help her father into his sweater. When that was on, she tightened the kerchief over her hair and went to get his wheelchair from an alcove at the rear of the car. The younger of the two Iron Guards followed her back. She had felt his eyes on her all during the trip, probing the folds of her clothes, trying to find the true outline of her body. And the farther the train had moved from Bucharest, the bolder his stares had become.

  As Magda bent over the chair to straighten the cushion on the seat, she felt his hands grip her buttocks through the heavy fabric of her skirt. The fingers of his right hand began to try to worm their way between her legs. Her stomach turning with nausea, she straightened up and wheeled toward him, restraining her own hands from clawing at his face.

  “I thought you’d like that,” he said, and moved closer, sliding his arms around her.
“You’re not bad looking for a Jew, and I could tell you were looking for a real man.”

  Magda looked at him. He was anything but “a real man.” He was at most twenty, probably eighteen, his upper lip covered with a fuzzy attempt at a mustache that looked more like dirt than hair. He pressed himself against her, pushing her back toward the door.

  “The next car is baggage. Let’s go.”

  Magda kept her face utterly impassive. “No.”

  He gave her a shove. “Move!”

  As she tried to decide what to do, her mind worked furiously against the fear and revulsion that filled her at his touch. She had to say something, but she didn’t want to challenge him or make him feel he had to prove himself.

  “Can’t you find a girl that wants you?” she said, keeping her eyes directly on his.

  He blinked. “Of course I can.”

  “Then why do you feel you must steal from one who doesn’t?”

  “You’ll thank me when it’s over,” he said, leering.

  “Must you?”

  He withstood her gaze for a moment, then dropped his eyes. Magda did not know what would come next. She readied herself to put on an unforgettable exhibition of screaming and kicking if he continued to try to force her into the next car.

  The train lurched and screeched as the engineer applied the brakes. They were coming into Campina junction.

  “There’s no time now,” he said, stooping to peer out the window as the station ramp slid by. “Too bad.”

  Saved. Magda said nothing. She wanted to slump with relief but did not.

  The young Iron Guardsman straightened and pointed out the window. “I think you would have found me a gentle lover compared to them.”

  Magda bent and looked through the glass. She saw four men in black military uniforms standing on the station platform and felt weak. She had heard enough about the German SS to recognize its members when she saw them.

  TWELVE