The Hollow Bones

by Leah Kaminsky

  ‘Do you know Hörbiger was a steam-engine designer, not a scientist?’

  Bruno laughed and threw the book back at his friend. ‘Some would argue that you are a hunter, dear Ernst, and not a zoologist.’

  ‘How dare you compare me to such a shyster? Ice moons, ice planets, global ice ether. And that insane theory of an ancient war between fire and ice.’

  ‘Hitler doesn’t seem to think so poorly of Hörbiger and his theories. I remember reading somewhere that he believes the reason academic scientists hesitated to accept World Ice Theory was because, and I quote, “Men do not wish to know.”’

  ‘I don’t care! I think it’s all got completely out of hand.’

  Bruno lowered his voice. ‘You’d better be careful who you say that to, Ernst. I am your dearest friend, but others cannot be trusted when it comes to passing on, shall we say, delicate information. It’s not worth the risk nowadays.’

  Maybe Bruno was right. What did it matter if the official aim of their expedition was to search for the descendants of Aryan forebears? If the public believed in World Ice Theory, well, good for them. But no matter what Ernst thought privately of all this nonsense, if it meant in the end that the government was going to subsidise his expedition, he should not jeopardise this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to map and photograph a new landscape.

  Bruno yawned and rose from his chair. ‘I’d better be getting home to Hildegard. Hopefully the baby’s asleep by now and she’s tidied up the infernal mess at home. I wish she could have spent some time at that excellent bride school Herta attended. You can really feel the difference when a woman isn’t focused on her man.’

  Ernst handed Bruno his hat and coat, which had fallen on the floor during the fracas with the cat. He could have sworn there was a whiff of cat pee on his friend as he walked out onto the landing.

  Ernst fumbled with the rusty deadbolt and locked the door. Herta came out of the bedroom and made her way to the kitchen.

  ‘Is Klaus all right?’ he asked, his voice a little shaky.

  A pot of soup was bubbling away on the stove, the air fuggy with the earthy smell. He watched as she sat down, ribbons of potato peel strewn across the wooden chopping board in front of her.

  Hadn’t he shown Herta how deep his feelings for her ran? Asking him to use his connections to try to find the whereabouts of Margarete was like placing a live grenade in his hands. Yet Herta had held out such hope. He envied her unwavering faith in people. What she didn’t seem to understand was that if he dared do what he promised, to start asking about an invalid relative, they would all soon be tossed into the void of history. Every few weeks he heard about another SS colleague vanishing, and shiny new recruits taking their place, no questions asked. Sacrificing himself and his family for the sake of finding out what happened to Margarete was unthinkable, but telling that to Herta might cost him his marriage. No, he would continue to deflect her questions by pretending he was covertly making enquiries.

  Ernst pulled up a chair. ‘Let’s talk about your sister.’

  CHAPTER 12

  October 1937

  Klaus was almost dead. If only there were some way to bring him back from the brink; the poor cat had been ailing for weeks, off his food and sleeping most of the day, his breathing punctuated by tiny whimpers. Herta stroked his matted fur, sitting vigil on the rug where he lay so still, curled up on himself. She sang lullabies and offered up tiny morsels of minced-up chicken Ernst would have gladly eaten instead.

  Herta watched the creature slowly fade away. She imagined Ernst would have already wrung the poor cat’s neck if she had allowed it. He’d say that was the mercy of a hunter’s heart, unable to understand how his kind and caring wife could be so cruel to an animal, prolong its suffering for her own selfish inability to lose its love. This business of dying was lengthy.

  What Herta didn’t know was that Ernst was plotting to sneak the wretched creature out, pretend it had wandered off and become lost during its final efforts to return to nature, dying peacefully under a bush. But he soon realised that was no solution. Herta would be inconsolable and distraught. She’d probably end up searching the neighbourhood day and night, calling the mangy beast. It would be better to wait it out until both cat and its mistress were ready to let go of each other. Ernst sometimes wished his young bride might show as much devotion to him as she did to her beloved, moth-eaten creature, lavishing attention on it with every flicker of movement it made.

  Eventually, by the end of the week, when Herta had fallen into a deep sleep after the day’s vigil, it happened – the cat, too tired to purr or meow anymore, took its final gasp. It was late at night. Ernst carefully wrapped the limp creature inside a coat and snuck out through the back stairs, so as not to wake his exhausted wife. The air was chilly. He headed towards the zoo on foot, a half-hour’s walk.

  Once he reached the laboratory, he worked quickly, placing the body onto a steel dissection table, where Klaus looked peaceful for the first time in weeks. Ernst picked up a scalpel and made a midline incision from the throat down along the belly, careful not to puncture the turgid intestines, a messy and odious business he would rather not have to deal with at this hour. The body was still warm, which made it harder to work on than the usual frozen carcasses, but there was no time to lose. Herta’s birthday was in a fortnight, and the hide needed to be salted for at least five days before being sent off to the tanner. He could already imagine her face when he presented her with the surprise gift: her beloved Klaus, preserved as an eternal pet. Meanwhile, he would build a false kitty grave in the rose garden downstairs, where Herta would be sure to want to hold a small memorial service.

  Ernst worked painstakingly on the cat all night. How to invoke the appearance of life in a lifeless body? Taxidermy was the closest he would ever get to performing magic; his job was to animate the inanimate. He needed to ensure the features and pose were just right for Herta to forget that Klaus was no longer in this world. Ernst had witnessed cruel oddities among specimens in museums around the world. Like the two raccoons placed in a mating position, on display at the Royal Geographic Society when Ernst gave a lecture there in 1934. It had been hard for him to keep a straight face standing at the podium.

  The salt stung the cuts on his fingers. A series of wax models stood on a shelf above his desk, a gift from the artist Friedrich Ziegler, who supplied the major universities with teaching tools for the study of embryology. He had sent them from his Freiberg studio just before he died. The captions were inscribed in Ziegler’s own handwriting: The Development of the Chick Embryo. The first was labelled Primitive Streak Stage – 16 hours, and it reminded Ernst of a shallow flesh wound, as if someone had taken a stick and scraped it along the surface of a tiny lake. The next model showed the Headfold Stage – 20 hours, and Ernst couldn’t help but think how much it looked like the secret haven tucked away between Herta’s thighs. He ran his finger down the groove in the wax model, leaving traces of salt along its fold.

  He remembered the time after his first expedition with Dolan in 1931, when he was back in Philadelphia for a while, working down in the basement of the Academy of Natural Sciences. The juvenile panda’s head rested on the table as it stared at him from eyeless sockets. Ernst was so behind in his work, with thousands of specimens from the trip still waiting to be labelled. Thirty-three cases, which might end up destroyed due to mould, were still waiting to be checked. Hopefully he would be able to salvage something from that shipment. These Americans and their fickle ways; he would never understand them.

  Stepping away from his desk, Ernst had strolled down an aisle that was lined on either side by yellow filing cabinets. He pulled open a wide metal drawer, reached in and gently unfolded some crumpled tissue paper. Ernst uncapped his pen and held the lid between his teeth as he wrote the words Bat Foetus onto a label. He tied it to one of the wings, thinking how much the developing creature looked like a tiny, fragile angel. They were such exquisite specimens, works of art in their own right.
A strange beauty lay in death. In the next drawer, resting on a bed of cotton wool, were the tiny bones of the baby panda’s feet, yellow as an old man’s teeth.

  Back at the table, Ernst had rummaged in a bowl filled with what looked like lentils, only he felt these orbs staring back at him. He chose two glass eyes and set them down. These were the most important part of a specimen. With their perpetual gaze, the eyes transformed what was otherwise just a carcass into a thing of wonder. He fixed them into the panda’s sockets and, almost immediately, felt as if the creature had come back to life. He found himself sharing secrets with the dead animal as it watched him.

  Ernst’s head had started throbbing at that point, a wave of nausea rising up. Fatigue blunted his brain, or maybe it was the formaldehyde fumes; the ventilation in the basement wasn’t as good as back home. He needed some fresh air. Ernst pushed his chair back and rushed towards the door, almost tripping over the thylacine specimen the curator had been working on. It was to go on display in time for Roosevelt’s visit to the museum. The thylacine laughed at him with a fixed grin as he steadied it, patting its wiry fur, which was still a little wet with arsenic.

  Thankfully, the fumes in his Berlin Zoo laboratory weren’t as pungent. Ernst began to skin Klaus, hoping to remove the hide in one piece, in the same way he had taught the natives on those trips with Brooky to the East. It was important to scrape away all traces of flesh and tissue. As he gently pulled Klaus’ penis backwards out of its sheath, it popped out, a long pink member Ernst wouldn’t have credited with belonging to an old tomcat. When the skin was finally removed from the bloody carcass, he sprinkled it with more salt to remove all moisture and oil.

  It was almost dawn when Ernst headed home to get some sleep. He was woken several hours later by the plaintive sounds of Herta calling Klaus. Before he even had a chance to pull on his slippers, she came racing into the bedroom.

  ‘I can’t find him anywhere, Ernst!’ Her face was pale, her hair flying wild. ‘I left him on the blanket by the heater last night. I’ve searched everywhere, but he’s disappeared. How can he have just wandered away?’ She looked like a helpless doll.

  Ernst sat on the edge of the bed and pulled his young wife towards him, urging her to sit down. He squeezed her hand and kissed her cheek. He had already carefully thought through what he was going to tell her. ‘Darling, I know this will be very hard for you to hear, but Klaus passed away overnight.’

  Her eyes were wide with disbelief.

  ‘I didn’t have the heart to wake you. You were so exhausted, mein Liebling. I got up to check on him in the middle of the night and he’d already left this world.’

  A tear rolled down her cheek as she searched his eyes for solace. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I buried him down in the garden early this morning. I didn’t want you to see him like that. Better you remember Klaus as he was when he was alive.’

  She was silent for a moment before throwing her arms around him. ‘Oh, Ernst!’ She sobbed, her body crumpling with grief.

  Ernst was relieved she bought the story. ‘I’ll work from home today. Maybe we could hold a small funeral for him later?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, wiping the tears with the hem of her silk nightgown. ‘Thank you. I would like that.’

  After breakfast they dressed and went downstairs to the small courtyard garden. Whispering her sad farewell to Klaus, Herta placed the last of the marigolds on top of a tiny mound of dirt wedged between two rosebushes. She stood very still, holding Ernst’s hand as he gave a brief eulogy.

  That afternoon, Herta sat on the sofa, idly flipping through the book Himmler gave them as a wedding present. On the title page of his bestseller, the Führer himself had inscribed: To the newlyweds, with best wishes for a happy and blessed marriage. Munich, 1937. She needed something to distract her from the anguish of losing Klaus, as well as take her mind off Margarete, a subject she and Ernst had skirted around ever since he assured her he would look into it. Ernst sat nearby, busily sorting through the results of his previous expedition with Brooky as part of his thesis research. Herta could recite by heart the notes she helped type up:

  UPUPIDAE

  Upupa epops saturata

  Citation: Lönneberg

  Common name: Hoopoe bird

  Five males: two, Jyekundo, 1 April 1935; two, Jyekundo, 9 April 1935; one, Yalung (Camp 79), 18 April 1935. One female: Tunggnolo, 11 September 1934.

  Though the differences between Upupa epops epops and U. e. saturata are very slight, I finally decided to refer my specimens to the latter race. The Tibetan hoopoe does not occur in the Hsifan mountains but is commonly found in Kham and Chinghai, Tibet. It frequents the nomad country and the agricultural districts north of the timber-line. It has semi-migratory habits, descending in winter into the erosion-canyons of the river gorges, where I found a few specimens wintering near Batang at an altitude of 2700 metres above sea level.

  ‘All this meticulous categorisation, Ernst. I just don’t understand it.’ She slammed the Führer’s opus on a side table. ‘And when it comes to humans – their eye colour, family background, disability – surely that labelling only serves the party’s bureaucratic needs?’

  ‘You’re right, mein Liebchen.’ He wanted to avoid an argument, today of all days. ‘The Führer sees the Jews as a grotesque pestilence that feed off the Volk. I know it sounds ludicrous, but who would the radiant Nordic German be without a swarthy antagonist?’

  She threw the book into the bin. ‘Glory needs its devil to define it.’

  Two weeks later, Herta celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday. She spent the morning sitting on a corner of the sofa beside her overflowing darning basket, stabbing her needle into Ernst’s socks, carefully mending holes made by his big toes. What a year this had been. She finally felt like a grown woman, even though today she was as excited as a little girl. Ernst had gone to work, promising her a big surprise when he got home from the laboratory. She wondered what it might be: perhaps some nylon stockings, or a box of chocolates? The radio hummed softly in the background, playing Puccini’s opera, Gianni Schicchi. Ernst’s colleagues had banded together to give them a Volksempfänger, or ‘people’s receiver’, as a wedding gift. This saved them seventy-six marks, but it still cost two marks a month for the broadcasting fee. The radio was a simple box made of brown Bakelite, embellished with a screeching eagle below the dial, the emblem of the Reich Broadcasting Corporation. Herta loved listening to performances of some of Germany’s most famous musicians, although more and more programs were punctuated with news broadcasts or staccato blasts of the Führer’s speeches. Today, the radio interrupted the opera every so often with news of pro-German riots in the Sudetenland. She reached across during those little interruptions and fiddled with the knob to turn down the volume.

  Late that afternoon, Ernst returned home with a parcel tucked under his arm. He rested it on the floor beside his briefcase. Flinging his jacket on the back of a chair, he came over to give Herta a hug, peeling her shawl off her shoulders.

  ‘We are going to celebrate your birthday in style. We’ll be having dinner with Bruno and Hildegard this evening. We’re meeting them at Hotel Kaiserhof on Wilhelmplatz at seven o’clock.’

  ‘Mein Gott, Ernst! It’s so expensive there. That’s where all the party officials go.’

  ‘Only the best for my darling wife. We will simply ignore them all as we raise our glasses to your health. Now, Schnell! Hurry up and go put on your finest gown.’

  Herta smiled and headed to the bedroom, trying to decide if she should wear a floral frock or a tailored suit.

  ‘Wait!’ Ernst called after her. ‘Just a minute, mein Liebchen. Before you get changed.’

  She stopped in the doorway and turned to look back at Ernst, who was shifting from one foot to the other.

  ‘I almost forgot to give you your present.’ He reached down to pick up the package he brought home, placing it on the table.

  Smiling, she came back and ran her hands over
the brown butcher paper, trying to discern from the shape what the gift might be. It was uneven yet firm. It couldn’t be a new sewing machine? Ernst wouldn’t have spent two months’ salary on such an indulgence. The old Singer her parents had given them was rickety, but it still worked perfectly.

  She unpeeled one side of the wrapping to reveal a flash of brown fur. A sewing machine was one thing, but a fur stole? She thought he’d been joking; they couldn’t afford that kind of luxury.

  ‘Ernst!’ she squealed. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  She threw her arms around him. ‘I love it. But it’s way beyond our means. You shouldn’t have done it.’

  He laughed as he placed his hands on her waist. ‘Don’t worry, darling. It didn’t cost a thing.’

  ‘How’s that?’ She planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘Did you steal it from the zoo?’

  He seemed puzzled. ‘No, Herta. I did it all myself.’

  She turned her attention back to the package and ripped off the rest of the paper. What stood before her was so unimaginably macabre that she held her breath in disbelief.

  ‘Surprise!’ Ernst was grinning.

  She felt her lips go numb. ‘How could you?’

  Ernst took a step back. ‘What’s the problem? You just told me you loved it.’

  ‘I thought it was a fur.’ She forced the words out between sobs.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A fur stole!’ Her whole body was trembling now. ‘I never imagined it would be my poor little Klaus.’

  As she lay in bed alone, having consigned Ernst to sleep the night in his study, surrounded by his maps and specimens, she remembered the day of Margarete’s eighteenth birthday. Herta sat beside her sister’s single bed, and the silence was broken by an icy wind creeping in through the cracks in the window frame. Sad daisies drooped their heads over the edge of a white vase on the washstand. Margarete’s fingers clawed at the metal frame of the bed.