by Michele Lang
By the time we reached the outskirts of Salzburg, near the Bavarian border, my repeated casts had brought me into range of the helpful girl who had unknowingly supplied me with my dress. Trudy, pretty as edelweiss, only child of the chief witch of the local Daughters of Arachne coven, hidden away in dirndls and petticoats in the Bavarian foothills, on the German border.
Trudy was exactly my age, with white-blond hair and a cream-fed complexion. She looked like a Bavarian fräulein, a flawless daughter of the Aryan nation. But her eyes gave her away. They had the tired, haunted look of a deer harried by hounds. She masked the fear with a tight, perfect smile.
But I, who also lived by fear, could see its telltale traces. She and I both moved like ghosts over the land of the living, the world of those who refused to see the evil germinating all around them.
Bless them, the witches; they took me in without a word of protest. Trudy’s mother, who refused to give me her name, had a face as soft and round as a cream bun, eyes deep-set, kind currants. She let me stay in the kitchen of their farmhouse, washed my hair and bloody feet in a bucket in the yard, gave me a new pair of ugly but sturdy walking shoes. But she refused to tell me of her coven and her clan, how they came to live unmolested among the folk in the foothills outside the Nazi town of Berchtesgaden.
The following morning, Trudy and I walked through the fallow fields, the sky a cold, brilliant blue bowl inverted over our heads, Leopold draped around my shoulders like a fox stole. I tried to get her to talk to me, tell me why despair hung over the coven’s every word and deed, but she was more interested in giving me a tour of the surrounding environs.
The reason why became clear once we came to a scenic overpass, and stopped walking. Trudy pointed up into the clouds. “Hitler’s stronghold is up that hill,” the girl said.
12
We stared up into the haze surrounding the huge, silent mountains, and the cold alpine air stole my breath. “Hitler’s stronghold. And you live in his shadow? How can you stand it?”
Trudy shrugged, as if she was trying her best to care but couldn’t be bothered. “He is too busy to trouble about us, even to notice us. He knows we are here. He even befriended my little niece and invited her up to his mountain house, the Berghof, for her birthday. They had tea and cake together. I tell you the truth. Little Liesel is charming and sweet. Like her, all of us are too trifling for him to bother with.”
I studied Trudy for overt signs of madness, but she seemed to believe every crazy word she said. She spoke slowly, rationally, as if she made perfect sense. We strolled along the forest path together, the pine trees waving in the brisk mountain breeze. Now that I had freshened up, finally gotten the tangles of blood out of my hair, we looked like two schoolgirls at liberty on a Sunday afternoon. The fatal calm of the alpine morning was like a goose-down coverlet smothering my face.
I needed Trudy’s help, and I told her a fanciful version of my travels, the way I wish it had gone. With a flourish, I came to the point of my long story. I had laid it on thick; she had to help me. The trip westward had taken weeks longer than I had planned. And with every moment I spent taking the air near lovely Berchtesgaden, my enemies drew closer to claiming The Book of Raziel. Or they had captured the Book already.
“So. I must get to Amsterdam, and without any further delay.”
“Of course we cannot do anything more to help you, Magdalena.”
I stopped dead in the path we walked. Sunlight filtered to where we stood together in the gloom under the canopy of trees thick overhead.
She smoothed her already perfect hair, rubbed her arms as if she felt a chill too deep to banish. “I have my family, the same way you do. We live in our enemies’ very shadow. If I step into your fight, even a baby step . . .”
I understood her point, though it was a bitter medicine to take. “You don’t need any more enemies, that’s for certain. But surely . . .”
I turned my head and studied the hills rolling serenely all around us. “Our enemies all work in league together, you will agree. They will come for you too, and not at the last either. For you are not only a witch, the same as me—you are also a Jew. The same as me. No matter how you look, what you believe, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
She winced and cleared her throat. “My family has lived here since time out of mind.”
“That time is about to end, whether I can turn aside my sister’s prophecy or not.”
She shook her head against me, against the truth. “Surely they would have gotten rid of us, so close to Hitler’s retreat. If they haven’t yet, they won’t.”
“You don’t want to see it, Daughter of Arachne, but by virtue of your simple existence you pose a threat to the supremacy of the Reich. No matter how ornamental and inoffensive you are, no matter how much you stand aside, nothing is going to save you. So fight.”
The morning, crisp and clear and cold, seemed to grow darker under the weight of my words. But I fought for something bigger than myself, and that determination to resist my doom gave me a measure of comfort. Poor Trudy didn’t even have that.
She paled as she considered my words, the roses fading from her cheeks. “But we trouble nobody, we are all but invisible.”
“So you lie to yourself. But the man in the Eagle’s Nest is ruled by fear, no less than you or I. Fear has no end—and to keep it at bay, he will destroy anything he deems a threat. Innocence is no protection.”
I sighed, thought of my guardian angel, so far away and distant, a star I navigated by but untouchable except in my dreams. “Hitler really lives up there?”
“Oh, yes. It is no secret, Hitler’s favorite getaway is up in those Bavarian mountains. His headquarters, the Berghof, used to be Otto Winter’s place, Haus Wachenfeld. You should see it. It floats like a castle in the clouds. And far above it, the Eagle’s Nest, like seeing the world from Heaven.”
I had seen the world from heaven, and it was somehow far less picturesque than Trudy implied. But I tried not to vex the girl by pointing out how close to admiration her description sounded.
“Is it heavily guarded?”
Her bitter laughter drew my attention back to her lovely face. “What do you think, Lazarus? By the Liebstandarte SS bodyguards, by werewolves lurking in the forest. By demonic wards set over every single threshold. You have the sight, can you not tell?”
I cast my senses into the clean air, and a sudden rush of nausea almost sent me to my knees. The world began tilting sideways like a boat taking on water, and I reached to a pine trunk for support and missed.
Trudy had fed me well at breakfast time, with hot buttered rolls, boiled eggs, and warm milk with coffee and sugar. I was glad I had eaten before turning my attention to the Berghof and the Eagle’s Nest perched high in the Bavarian hills.
Blinking hard, my eyes leaking with tears, I covered my face and withdrew my senses inward, away. The world returned to its pristine alpine clarity, and mercifully the urge to toss up my breakfast receded.
“Well protected, indeed,” I managed to say.
When I opened my eyes, Trudy knelt beside me, her face a carefully composed picture of concern. “I want to help you, you know I do. But I have to keep my clan alive. We’ve already done too much.”
By now, I understood that Trudy’s exposed position posed a danger to me too. She and her coven had done all they could. “You’re right. Send me away. If you know a friendly soul on the way to Amsterdam, send me to her. I will not endanger you further—by the Witch of Ein Dor! To live in the shadow of such a place every minute of the day.”
Trudy shrugged, wet the tip of a forefinger and tested the wind. “It is only the devil we know. No worries, Lazarus. You fight your battles, and we will fight ours.”
I was about to respond, to say that our battle was the same, when we both smelled the same rank rot in the same moment.
The Staff.
“Go into shit,” I muttered at him in Hungarian, and I rose to my feet. My new, ugly shoes were a li
ttle big but fine with some newspaper crumpled into the toes. I smoothed the dress Leopold had pinched for me, quickly skimming my fingers over the brushed cotton and the careful needlework.
“I’ll draw him off; he’s still far away. That’s the sorcerer I told you about. He must be visiting Herr Hitler up in the clouds. That wizard’s after me and my kind, not you.”
“He’ll know I helped you.” Her voice was steady, but I saw the panic rising in her eyes.
“No, no . . .I’ll go fast enough to protect you. He doesn’t care, doesn’t have time to take his revenge, and if he comes round later you’ll smell him again before it’s too late.”
She straightened her pinafore, wiped the tears off her cheeks, but otherwise looked perfectly composed. “Do what you must.”
“I’ll take him off your hands, easy as you please. Kiss your mother for me, and thank her from my heart.”
Upon consideration, I understood Trudy’s strange half existence well. Sometimes, pretty lies are all we have.
I left her in the clearing and started hiking up the winding pathway to the Berghof, my limbs trembling with exertion with every step, my mind recalling the horrible visions my sister had poured like poison into my ears and that now I could not erase from my brain.
As I walked I stoked my heroic delusions. Why stop at the Staff? If I could survive an encounter with the wizard, and return from death’s dominion too, why not confront Herr Hitler himself?
My ankle tingled with a sudden tug, but I ignored it and kept going. The tug turned into a bite, sharp but not excruciating.
Leopold had embedded his blunt imp’s teeth into my ankle. “Ow! What the blazes are you doing?”
I shook my foot, but the creature, now no larger than a kitten, held fast, pulsed with the tempo of my agitation. “Mmph, mmph!” He refused to disengage long enough to make his meaning clear.
With a rumbling sigh, I reached down and pried his jaw open. His little chin felt cold and scaly to the touch, but though he waxed with my own evil, I could not fear him. To the contrary, his impulsive, wicked ways were all too familiar.
“Peace, Leopold! Let me do what I have to do.”
“You forget yourself, Mama.”
“I forget nothing.”
I held him in my hands like a baby dragon crouched in my palms and I started upward along the path again. His screaming shriek sounded like a wailing woman at the edge of a grave.
The din was so dreadful, so disastrous, that I had to stop him before I went on. “What, Leopold?”
He smiled when he saw how he had gotten my attention, sat up and drank my impatience like my life’s blood. “You seek your book. The Book!”
“Of course, so I can save my sister and fight. But my adversary waits for me here!”
He shook his head, clearly convinced I was too stupid to save. “You think Hitler is your worst problem.”
For the first time since I had set off on the mountain path, my grim self-righteousness began to falter. “Well . . . yes. Hitler is the key to all. If he dies, Gisele’s prophecies die with him. He is a madman like Napoleon—vanquish him, and the world will settle. He is so close.”
“Think! How many thousands of Jews wish they could strike Hitler dead with their own hands. But you know all too well that is a fool’s dream, no more.”
It was my dream too, but I held my tongue. I had assumed Leopold’s knowledge and abilities were limited to my own, that as my creature he was thus constrained in his potential and range.
His eyes glinted, and his lips parted in a delicate grimace of a smile. “I am indeed your child. And may the child not exceed the mother?”
The imp alluded to my mother and myself, and he appealed to my own pride as well as his intended path. “Ah, tempter. You can’t stop me, not even with the truth.”
“You know you mustn’t. Without the Book, you will die long before you reach the front door. The Staff and the SS werewolves will surely see to that.”
Leopold spoke my fears aloud, and my traitor body began to tremble from the top of my head to my feet in their ugly shoes. “Ah, but what about you, little protégé? I thought you plan on exceeding me.”
“Of course my ambition matches yours. But if you die I die with you.” His face, pleading, grew serious. “If you die here, you stay dead, and for very bad reasons. I am not ready for death, even if you are. Life in this world is sweet.”
“I would die to stop the man in that palace in the mountains.” I could see it now, half hidden by fir and linden trees overlooking a scenic valley.
“Don’t die a stupid death, Magda. Smell the werewolves—they wait!”
As soon as he said it, the wind shifted and I could scent them all around us.
“Mama, go back down now and they won’t risk crossing their wards to attack you,” he wheedled, his fingers prickling against mine as he gripped them.
I hesitated. He was right, of course. But to know my nemesis was so close, just above my head . . . I didn’t want to die, no more than Leopold did. But I had to stop the Staff and his master, Hitler. They were both so close.
Yet as I walked, Leopold’s nibbles no more than a mere annoyance, my steps slowed. My body longed for coffee, pastry, a cigarette even, in Bathory’s corner alcove of Café Istanbul. And though my world still existed, in daily life as well as in my memory, I sheared away from that blessed ordinariness. Life in Budapest still ran along its customary tracks, like the yellow tram I rode home from work in the light of dawn.
And in that moment I understood my mother as I never had before. Her unceasing craving for normalcy. Simple mortality. A life of husband, little girls, red balloons and bicycles on a spring morning at Heroes’ Square.
My footfalls along the path slowed, then stopped. My mother’s way, the domestic paradise of husband and children, was not mine to choose. And Leopold, my little evil impulse, was true and right, the very embodiment of the voice I had fought to ignore every night I had escaped to the cafés, to my ardent Communist poets, to avoid my mother and her witch’s knowledge.
To seek my death at Hitler’s hands now, to openly fling myself into oblivion, was not my proper fate. It was false courage, the courage of blustering, innocent youth. I was only twenty in human years. Yet already I was no longer as innocent as that.
I stroked Leopold’s head with the fingertips of my left hand. “Ah, my friend, my friend,” I whispered, the salt of my tears delicious against my living lips. “I waste your precious time and mine. We must go on to Amsterdam.”
I sensed the werewolf dogs glaring at us in the darkness of the alpine shadows, listening to every syllable we spoke aloud. They waited, longing to tear out my throat, and they knew I could not forestall them if I stepped into their demesnes. Another hundred meters, less, I could almost hear them whisper. Come, come.
I turned my back on them and retreated down the path, Leopold trilling with pleasure, a low growl of frustration rising all but inaudible behind us. They knew they could not touch me with impunity, not outside their wards, not with Leopold on my shoulder and the angel’s blessing on my heart.
“Ah, Mama, Mama,” Leopold sang, when we had gotten well clear of the path to Hitler’s compound. “We live to see another day.”
He took a springing leap out of my hands, clean muscled and wiry like a homeless cat. He landed in the path ahead, and sent up a puff of dust and fir needles.
He looked at me over his shoulder and he smiled. And in a bright flash he grew into a man-sized form, contained within a burst of spiritual lightning. “I ascend, Mama, I ascend. I saved your life, a good deed, and now I ascend.”
His words surprised me, left me bereft. “But why are you going now, Leopold? I need you, to help me get to Amsterdam.”
Leopold smoothed his skull with his fingertips. “You never needed me, Mama. But I did a good to you, it raises me higher. I may go?”
I felt naked at the spot on my shoulder where Leopold had perched in our journey together westward. But the lit
tle imp deserved his freedom, his own chance to choose his path.
Our farewell was unexpected and sudden. I rubbed at my eyes and nodded, a little too quickly. “Go.”
I watched him go forth with a mother’s twinge at seeing him lift away from where I stood, planted like a tree on the hillside below him. All of us live on through our good deeds, but it shook me to see my wicked ones become sentient and alive. And thus, transformed.
“Be free, Leopold,” I called, and the sight of him shooting into the sky like a firework, glowing marigold orange in the morning sunlight, made me gasp. “Bless you, Leopold, go in peace. Stay out of trouble!”
“But I am your child, Mama. Trouble, I love.” He did a dancing little jig in the sky, exuberant as a Chagall painting, blazing as he rose and disappeared into the sky, a star falling upward. The spark of my soul that had sheared off to make Leopold pulled painfully away.
I was glad to see him escape the troubles of this world, even as I stayed behind to face them. “Good-bye,” I whispered. And I waited for the Staff to hunt me down.
13
I waited, but the Staff never came. Did Leopold perform another good deed and draw the wizard away from me? Or did the Staff have other missions to accomplish, knowing he had failed to lure me past the wards protecting Hitler and into the werewolves’ waiting jaws? To this day, the mystery remains unsolved, but as the day faded and the wizard stayed away, I realized that I was not destined to face him on the mountainside near Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.
The Staff, gone, no longer represented an imminent threat to Trudy and her coven. I decided to come back down the mountain, thank her mother properly, and see if I could do anything to help them in their quiet desperation.
Instead, the country witches blessed me with their generosity and understated courage. Trudy and her family did what they could to send me swiftly on my way, in the hope that they could return to their peaceful, anonymous existence in the shadow of the Reich. Trudy’s mother went so far as to convince her cousin, a wealthy bandleader, to lend me his second car.