The End of Law

by Therese Down

  “Father, I know you are just a chemist.”

  Ernst raised his eyebrows, looked at Hedda indignantly.

  “No, I don’t mean to be rude – not like that. I mean that I know you are not a military man, or a Gestapo officer or something, so I know you won’t have anything to do with what I am about to tell you… and you may be horribly shocked.”

  Hedda wondered how she could break to him what she had learned from Karl Muller only yesterday. Already, she felt as though she had lived with the knowledge a long time. She was sorry to inflict on her father the malaise such knowledge brought. She did not have much time to hold his attention, however, and he was not a man to indulge fantasy or rumour, so she would have to be direct.

  Her father was the single most powerful figure in her life apart from Walter, and the only one she could assume was on her side. He was rich and he had a very senior, influential position in a major German company. He consorted with government officials. He was her only chance of help. There was no knowing if Karl Muller was trustworthy or really in a position to help her daughter.

  “Don’t ask me how I know what I am about to tell you,” Hedda began, “but I can assure you my source is reliable and I am not just being hysterical… or… or… having a breakdown or something.”

  “Go on.” Ernst took off his reading glasses, folded them and put them in a case that he took from an inside jacket pocket. Then he looked in the opposite inside pocket for another glasses case and opened it, took out his distance glasses and applied them in order to clearly see Hedda in her seat halfway down the dining table.

  “I know about something – some secret government plan called T4.” Ernst was unable to hide his surprise. Hedda saw his discomfiture. “You have heard of it!”

  Ernst coloured a little, recovered his composure. “I have… that is, we hear rumours.”

  “Well, what I am about to tell you is not a rumour, Father. I am sorry to come here and burden you with such a horrible thing, but… I have no one else.”

  Ernst wanted desperately to go to work. He simply could not afford to discuss with his daughter anything to do with T4. No civilians were supposed to know about T4. This was a potentially very compromising situation.

  “Hedda, I cannot be late for work. And what you have just said, well, if it is true, it is highly secret – dangerous to discuss. Who could possibly have said such a thing to you?” But the suspicion that Walter had been indiscreet or that Hedda had discovered some carelessly discarded document in Walter’s office at home was occurring to him. This was preferable to her having learned it some other way. He drained his coffee cup, began to stand up, decidedly nervous now.

  “No, Father!” Hedda shouted and made Ernst jump. “You may not just leave me this time. You need to listen to me. It is a matter of life and death – Agnette’s life or death!”

  “How dare you speak to me in this manner, Hedda!” protested Ernst. “Whatever has become of you?” He stood up and walked to where she sat, regarding his daughter directly.

  Hedda in turn jumped to her feet, knocking her chair over. She faced him. “I dare speak to you like this, Father,” she began again, more quietly, “because I have it on good authority that Walter – my husband and Agnette’s father – has consented to have Agnette killed!”

  Ernst could not speak; could hardly process the statement at first.

  “Something to do with a child euthanasia project: this T4 organization. They round up children they think are too sick, or mentally helpless… I don’t know. I know it sounds insane, but you have to believe me, Vati!” She had not used the diminutive to address her father since she was a small child. “Walter has actually agreed to let them kill my little girl with drugs, because they do not think she will ever get better and that she is…” Hedda tried to recall the words Karl had used, the term the government used, to describe children of no use to the Reich – “oh, some horrible term… ‘useless’ or ‘not fit to live’ or something. I know how absurd it sounds, but apparently even doctors and nurses are taking children to special places where they actually murder them! I have to stop them from hurting Agnette. Vati, I need your help. You might be able to speak to Walter or… or get Agnette out of the hospital for me. Help me get her away from here. Give us the money to escape – please, I am begging you. Help me to stop them killing my child – your granddaughter!” Exhaustion, grief, desperation all overwhelmed Hedda as she stood before her father. She covered her face and sobbed.

  It had been a long time since anyone had touched her gently or held her. She was almost shocked when Ernst placed tentative hands on her shoulders. She suddenly collapsed into his chest, and he put his arms around her and held his daughter as she wept. He could not think what to say. After some moments, Ernst gently pushed Hedda away, looked into her face. So much grief! How very tired and helpless she looked.

  She had grown into a beautiful young woman right in front of him, with hardly a sound. Her expression had changed from open smiles and round-eyed happiness to studied, pencilled pouts and detached resignation. Her school grades had been unremarkable; she seemed uninterested in anything that required concentration. Her only reading matter was glossy magazines. But it was true that he had never tried to engage her interest. Ernst had assumed Hedda was unintelligent, and in any case, given her gender and class, intellect was superfluous. Her mother schooled her in all she needed to know about make-up and couture. Ernst and Hedda had had no common ground from which to begin a conversation. Until now.

  “Hedda,” began Ernst, “I do not know who has been filling your head with all this… dramatic information…” She pulled back violently, began to protest. He silenced her by closing his eyes and raising a hand. “I have not finished. I would very much like to know who has been talking to you.” His voice was quiet, concerned.

  Hedda was tempted to confide in him, but she recalled Karl’s face; how terrified he had been when he had spoken to her; how he had said they would kill him if his treachery were discovered. She shook her head and looked away from her father’s searching eyes.

  “Then I must surmise such talk is rumour, but –” again he cut off her nascent protestations – “I will look into it. Listen to me, Hedda.” Ernst regarded his daughter with renewed focus and his tone was prescriptive. “You must not speak of this, of our conversation here, to anyone. Do you hear me?”

  Hedda was startled by his earnestness, but at least he was not dismissing her.

  “I mean it, Hedda. Speak to no one of this. I cannot help you if you do. I will speak to you again shortly, when I… know a little more.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead, pulled her gently to one side so that he could proceed from the dining room. “I have to go – I will certainly be late for work. Please, drink some coffee, have a little breakfast, Hedda. You look so tired.”

  “But what can I do right now to save Agnette, Father? How can I stop them from hurting her right now?” She turned to watch his progress from the room.

  Ernst halted, turned to look at her once more over his distance glasses, removed them, replaced them in their case and returned them to an inner pocket. “Be calm. Try to be calm, Hedda. Stay with her. Try not to arouse suspicion. Act normally. Say nothing to anyone – least of all Walter. Do you understand me?”

  Hedda sighed, nodded. “Thank you, Vati.” Then, as he turned from her again she added, “I do love you, you know.”

  Ernst stopped suddenly, placed a hand on the door frame, bowed his head as if trying to remember something, then left.

  Following the series of phase two development meetings with several senior Reich ministers and IG Farben board members that Ernst had scheduled for that day, he telephoned his son-in-law and arranged to meet him at Walter’s T4 offices.

  “I will come straight to the point, Walter,” Ernst began, coughing nervously, removing his glasses and cleaning them with shaking hands. “Someone has told Hedda – or she has found out somehow – about T4, and…”

  “What?
” Walter was instantly furious. “How is that possible? How can you know this?” he shouted, rising from his chair.

  “Please, Walter!” Ernst hastily put on his glasses again and lifted a hand as if to stop Walter advancing. “I am only telling you what I know. Naturally, I had not assumed you knew already…”

  “What are you implying?” Walter leaned on his desk and glared at his father-in-law. “Are you suggesting I have told her? Because I certainly have not.”

  “No, Walter. I said I had not assumed you knew!” Ernst raised his voice in frustration at Walter’s refusal to let him speak or to listen. “If you would do me the courtesy of listening to me, please. This is very difficult.” Ernst tried to collect himself. All morning, Hedda’s distress, the horror that he was now involved in a potential violation of the essential secrecy with which the T4 work was conducted and the inevitability of this encounter with Walter had distracted him terribly. It had loomed like a gathering storm just below the veneer of normality he was obliged to keep intact throughout the day’s phase two meetings.

  His own board presentation of cost and profit projections regarding a proposed new plant construction near the Auschwitz camp had been nerve-racking enough. He had long been working on the calculations and research necessary to present viable costings for the use of camp inmates as labour to produce the chemicals that would exterminate them. Once the war was won, the factory would become an industrial chemical centre providing work for the local population. But Ernst had not been prepared for how the science and theory of extermination became harder to expostulate with conviction when one’s own granddaughter was a designated victim. And he had been most unprepared for how moved he had been by Hedda’s grief and her declaration of love for him. It had been decades since anyone had said they loved him.

  “Please, Walter –” Ernst spoke again, sadness usurping his anger – “sit down. I do not know how Hedda has discovered this, but she is aware that… Well, she says…”

  “What? Spit it out! What did she say?” Walter consented to sit down again, but he was in no mood to be patronized by this old man for whom he had little personal regard. He had no choice but to work with his father-in-law and he understood Ernst was an excellent chemist, but he did not like him.

  When first Walter had become infatuated with Hedda, Ernst seemed lukewarm and indifferent. His demeanour hardly changed after they were married. At some level, Walter had been terribly hurt and then angered by Ernst’s lack of enthusiasm at his daughter’s choice of husband. Part of him had hoped that marriage would bring him a degree of paternal surrogacy, a share in his wife’s rights to fatherly affection. But it soon became apparent that where Walter’s own father had alienated him by expecting too much of him, a similarly unbreachable gulf had developed between Ernst and Hedda, caused by Ernst’s indifference. Walter could not hope to be included by extension in a bond that was not there, and the evidence in Ernst’s demeanour that the acquisition of Walter as a son did nothing to inspire paternal interest was doubly galling.

  Now, Ernst regarded the angry young man before him and sighed. Everything suddenly seemed so hopeless. “She says you have agreed to let Agnette die. She says she knows this from a reliable source. Is it true?”

  Walter’s expression changed from glowering anger to shock. His face relaxed into a sort of neutral bewilderment.

  “I can see that it is true,” remarked Ernst. He took off his glasses again, looked for a chair and sat down.

  When Walter spoke once more, his voice was quiet. “Agnette is not going to get well.” It was the first time he had voiced aloud any feelings or opinions about his daughter in a very long time. Indeed, he had not even said her name aloud for weeks.

  “So it seems,” Ernst responded, then looked quickly at Walter to ensure he was not misunderstood. “I mean, apparently this is the prognosis of the doctors at Brandenburg.” There was a short silence during which both men contemplated the little girl whose life had been measured and valued so slightly.

  “How could she have discovered this?” Walter was still subdued. He even sounded sad.

  “Hedda?” Ernst sighed again, made a face he used when estimating chemical reactions. “Perhaps she saw the records? She is in the hospital a long time each day. It is possible she had access to the files, became curious?”

  Walter shook his head. “No. Everything is coded. Nothing is stated – we are very careful of that. She could not have understood what the notes meant. Someone must have told her.”

  Ernst began carefully, only too aware of the volatility of Walter’s temper. “Forgive me, Walter, but is it certain she has not found out from you?” Then quickly he added, “You know. Perhaps a mislaid document, a phone call overheard, sleep-talking – I don’t know…”

  Walter considered each possibility then, dismissed them all definitively. “Absolutely not.”

  “Then… how?”

  “‘Who’, you mean.” Walter narrowed his eyes, put his hands together as if praying, then brought the tips of his fingers to his lips in an attitude of focused thought. His eyes widened suddenly and something like triumph lit his eyes. “I may have an idea who did this.”

  “Who? One of the nursing staff?”

  “Perhaps, but I have another suspect.”

  Ernst waited expectantly when Walter did not enlighten him, then he grew irritated. “Well who, in God’s name, man?”

  Walter, however, had recovered control. Distracted from his own culpability in the betrayal of his daughter and wife by the treachery of another to the Reich, he was busy transmuting his guilt to a desire for vengeance. He got briskly to his feet. “I am afraid I am not yet at liberty to say, but I must start investigations. You must excuse me, Ernst.”

  But Ernst was not to be so easily dismissed. Having been stirred to consider anew the importance to his life of his daughter and granddaughter, he wanted to discuss the advisability of proceeding with the planned disposal of Agnette by whatever means Walter had authorized.

  “Just a minute, Walter.” He too rose from his chair. “What are you going to do about Agnette now? Surely you cannot… go ahead as planned? Hedda knows! Think, man. Think of the consequences!”

  Walter seemed to pause, lowered his head, half nodded. “I’ll speak to Brandt,” he said. “In any case, he must know that the whole operation is possibly compromised. Now please, I must go. Heil Hitler.”

  Ernst returned the salute and without further words left Walter’s office.

  Back at the hospital in Brandenburg, Hedda had ascertained from Marguerite that no one had tried to move Agnette and, apart from changing her catheter bag, changing the sheets and giving Agnette a wash, the nurses had not attended to her. Certainly they had not tried to administer drugs. The painstaking spooning into Agnette’s mouth of prescribed amounts of fluids and mashed-up cereal with fruit, they had gladly left to Marguerite. There was a definite flicker of recognition when Agnette heard her mother’s voice.

  “You see? Did you see that?” Hedda had smiled delightedly, looking at Marguerite. “She knew I was back!”

  Marguerite had seen and she smiled back warmly at Hedda, but she felt great compassion for both mother and daughter. She had sat at Agnette’s side for four hours, and she was bored and cramped in this silent, isolated room. Used to a big, noisy family and the demands of a busy life, Marguerite was ill equipped for the patient silence that was Hedda’s natural sanctuary. The prostrate little girl, scarred and staring at the window with far-away eyes, seemed unearthly to Marguerite. The room was morgue-like and oppressive to her.

  “What shall I do now, Frau Gunther?” Marguerite had asked quietly.

  “Go back to the house, Marguerite. Help Cook with Anselm, carry on as usual. But remember, if anyone here asks, you are not looking after him – OK? They must think you cannot be infectious. I am hoping Walter did not come home last night. He usually doesn’t come home till Wednesday when he works in Berlin. If he does turn up, act normally. Tell him I am stayin
g with Agnette because…” She fought the hatred that rose spontaneously in her chest when she thought of what he had done; remembered she must not divulge it to Marguerite. Then an idea occurred that gave some satisfaction to her burning outrage. “Tell him I am staying here because there are definite signs of improvement in Agnette’s condition and I am so excited I wish to stay with her.” The idea grew into more than a way of scalding Walter’s conscience; she grew excited. “Yes, Marguerite, tell him that I am of the hope – the belief – that Agnette may be going to wake up.”

  Marguerite looked involuntarily at the girl in the bed and adjusted her doubtful expression before responding to Hedda, “Yes, Frau Gunther. I will tell him.” Then, as she collected her coat and the bag she had brought to Hedda that morning, now containing washing and the empty coffee flask, she said, “Shall I bring you more clothes and coffee tonight? Some nice toiletries, perhaps? More magazines?”

  Hedda smiled and nodded. “Yes please, and bring some more books. Here –” she crossed to the windowsill and retrieved a number of children’s story books, put them in the bag, “some more books for Agnette, please. We are tired of these now.” Marguerite smiled again, turned to go. “And Marguerite…”

  “Yes, Frau Gunther?”

  “Give Anselm a very big kiss from me.”

  Marguerite smiled broadly, saying, “Of course I will.” And she was gone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Walter met Dr Brandt for dinner at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski in central Berlin. The early evening light allowed spectacular views of the Brandenburg Gate from the restaurant windows. Brandt ordered goose liver pâté, lamb with sage and lime sauce, champagne. Walter said he would have the same. In truth, his appetite was depressed by the burden of his business. Possibly, he was about to divulge most unwelcome information to Hitler’s private physician and overall director of the top secret T4 Child Euthanasia Programme. Even worse, the divulgence would invite close scrutiny of Walter’s own loyalty in what might be a most compromising breach of security.