Children of Wrath

by Paul Grossman

  Kai shrugged helplessly. “Not that I’m aware of. Only that it’s happened to kids both when they’re alone and in pairs. They take off somewhere and never come back.”

  By now it had grown impossible to ignore a rising tide of noise behind them. Thousands of people were suddenly pouring into the Lustgarten, breaking out in song: “Arise, ye workers from your slumbers! Arise, ye prisoners of want!”

  Waving red flags, bearing banners—DOWN WITH THE BRÜNING DICTATORSHIP—rank after rank of Communists marched in, clenching fists high. Germany had the largest Marxist movement outside Russia, and like the homeless, their numbers were swelling each month of the economic downfall. Vicki’s father ranted about the day they ever came to power, saying the country would be destroyed and the Jews would suffer more than anyone else. But plenty of people, sometimes even Fritz, were convinced it was almost inevitable the red flag would someday fly over the Reichstag.

  To avoid being swallowed by this revolutionary mob, Willi and Kai had no choice but to abandon their bench and back off toward the cathedral, where they paused in the afternoon shadows.

  “There’s really not much more to say.” The boy shrugged. “I’m just glad someone on the police force finally knows the truth.”

  This kid had an affable personality, Willi thought. A good head on his shoulders, under all the makeup. But what sort of future could possibly be in store for him?

  “Well, I’m not assigned to the case, as I told you.” Willi handed him a card. “But if you ever get any information at all…”

  “Thanks, Detektiv. You know where to find me, I expect.”

  Kai’s pink lips broke into a smile as he gave an ironic shrug, causing his earring to dance. “Anyway, I’m going in to have a few words with The Man Upstairs, if they don’t bar me at the door. I really do appreciate your talking to me.” He took a step away, then turned. “Oh, by the way, I doubt this’ll help, but I have heard talk, Sergeant. Sounds kind of crazy, but some kids don’t think a man’s doing it. They say it’s a woman. At the leaders’ meeting I heard stuff about a red-haired lady kids in Neukoln were calling the Shepherdess.”

  Willi’s head nearly exploded. Where had he heard that name?

  * * *

  After Kai disappeared, Willi just stood there. Nearly forty? It seemed inconceivable. How could one man could kill so many children?

  Or one woman.

  Despite the shouts of a thousand Communists he felt very much alone suddenly. As if he needed someone to talk to. A bit of support. He hated disturbing him, but even though it was after six, the deputy president, Willi knew, would probably still be at his desk.

  At the Police Presidium he took the main elevator up to the administrative offices. The secretary was gone but he could hear a voice in the doctor’s office. Willi popped his head in and saw Weiss alone, on the phone. Disappointed, he was about to leave when the doctor looked up and emphatically motioned Willi to come in and sit.

  “Yes, of course I realize it’s only propaganda.” Weiss’s eyes rolled as he put his hand over the receiver and mouthed to Willi, My lawyer. “But I can’t let it go on, Freytag. I’ve got to fight back.”

  On Weiss’s desk, Willi noticed a newspaper with stiff, angry letters slashed across the masthead: DER ANGRIFF!

  The Attack.

  Beneath it, filling half the front page, a cartoon of a donkey on an ice pond, its four legs comically splayed. The face on the beast had an unmistakable and grotesque likeness to Dr. Weiss’s. An article following was titled “Isidore on Thin Ice.” By Joseph Goebbels.

  Willi looked up and saw the anger and hurt glistening behind the doctor’s spectacles, so prominently featured on the beaklike nose of the cartoon. This Goebbels was clearly getting to him, Willi could see. And it made him furious because he worshipped Weiss.

  “Twice a week, issue after issue, he uses me for target practice.” Weiss flipped open the paper as if showing it to his lawyer. “He’s called me Isidore so many times people think it’s my real name.”

  On the page now open Willi spied a photograph of a man at a podium he was sure he recognized. That scrawny frame leaning into the microphone, those fierce black eyes. It was the same guy in Freksa’s office, the lame one who liked to scream. And that twisted insignia on his armband. The same he’d seen on those brown troops shouting at the Gypsies. The same on Freksa’s lapel.

  He tilted his head to read the caption: Dr. Goebbels addresses a rally of the National Socialist Workers Party.

  So this was Goebbels.

  And these were the infamous Nazis, who lived to start street fights with the Communists and blamed all Germany’s troubles on the Jews. It all came together. No wonder they were picking on Weiss, one of the most prominent Jews in Berlin.

  “I know the man’s no fool.” The doctor was clearly getting irritated with his lawyer. “He’s got a Ph.D. in philosophy. The philosophy of hell! But I don’t care if I do lose.” He broke a pencil in two. “This time I’m taking the son of a bitch to court.”

  Willi squirmed. Obviously this was not the moment to come seeking support.

  “Stay, stay,” Weiss said, motioning him.

  But Willi whispered he’d just dropped by to say hello and would come again another time, when Herr Deputy President was less engaged.

  On the street Willi realized how depressing this was. Not only had Freksa framed six innocent men, but he was part of a racist, reactionary movement scheming to undermine the Berlin police and destroy the republic.

  Evening had fallen. Darkness lay ahead. Willi wasn’t sure what to do. Only that it had to be something. He breathed out a sigh of despair, feeling suddenly as if the weight of all Germany, all Europe, had fallen on his shoulders, when in a flash the streetlights blinked on, casting the whole Alex in an incandescent glow. And like lightning in his own brain he remembered where he’d heard that name: the Shepherdess.

  Braunschweig.

  Unable to penetrate the mystery of the “love cult” and thwarted by the good reverend himself—who never got him into Saturnalia as promised and was drunker every time Willi spoke to him—he’d basically dropped that trail and focused on the peddlers’ market instead. Now he grabbed a cab and told the driver to step on it.

  The little chapel on Spandauer Strasse was dark, but a light was on in the rear apartment. When Willi knocked on the door he heard groaning. “Reverend?”

  More groaning.

  Stepping on a ledge and peering through a grimy window, he saw Braunschweig on the floor, face up with his arms over his head, pants halfway down to his knees. My God. He was drunker than ever, if that was possible. Willi called his name again, and this time Braunschweig pulled up his pants, then collapsed, motionless. After much concerted knocking and calling, he jumped again, crouched to his knees, but couldn’t get his legs firm enough to stand up.

  Willi felt like kicking in the door. Somehow he had to get to this guy. He was thinking seriously about breaking the window when miraculously Braunschweig rose, walked over, and opened up the door, inviting Willi in as if nothing were wrong. “Hello there, Detective!” he said merrily, arching his bushy gray eyebrows before falling sideways, right back to the floor.

  His limbs were rubber. He couldn’t sit. Even his fingers were too limp to clasp anything. Each time Willi helped him to a chair, Braunschweig slid right back to the floor. Finally Willi just crouched next to him.

  “Listen to me, Reverend. What do you know about the Shepherdess?”

  “The who?”

  “Brigitta’s predecessor. You called her the Shepherdess.”

  “Stay and have a drink with me.”

  “You told me she brought animals, for rituals.”

  “For who?”

  “That it was a slaughterhouse over there. This is urgent, Braunschweig. Lives depend on it, for God’s sake.”

  “Don’t lecture me about God. I’m the one who lectures around here. Our topic today will be, aw … don’t get all insulted, Kraus. Stay, have a
drink.” The reverend was holding out his arms from the floor. “Tell me, how come she doesn’t she love me anymore?”

  “The Shepherdess, Braunschweig. The Shepherdess.”

  But the reverend had passed out. Willi looked around desperately. Filthy dishes. Open tins of food. Bottles, glasses everywhere. Total Depravity. He couldn’t take it.

  “Damn it, Reverend—at least tell me how I can find your ex-wife!” he cried at the scarily bloated, red face.

  It must have been the magic word because from the depths of his stupor Braunschweig replied, “Dawn, Kraus. Maybe I forgot to say. That’s why you never found her. Go before sunrise, Tuesdays. Fridays. Tell them at the door…”

  The reverend teetered on the edge of blackness again, then somehow managed to spit out the strangest words Willi’d ever heard: “Yasna Haptanghaiti.”

  And that was it. Braunschweig was out.

  Yasna Haptanghaiti?

  Twelve

  “Yasna Haptanghaiti,” he said at the door, praying he’d gotten it right.

  “Mazdaznan.” The mustached man in a red turban held out his hand.

  Finally. Willi was in.

  That he could remember the tongue-twister was miracle enough. That the Reverend Braunschweig had gotten all this right seemed divine intervention. Four thirty in the morning, pitch-dark, the air crisp and chilly, and people were hurrying up the steps of the art nouveau mansion on Bleibtreu Strasse uttering the same crazy words and darting into the Divine Radiance Mission. Who could have imagined such a witching hour, in the heart of swank Charlottenburg.

  Only a handful of candles lit the lobby, emitting a scent that made Willi vaguely nauseous. He gave his eyes a second to adjust. The shelves of crystals and mystical figurines looked familiar. But the last time he’d spied in the window he’d obviously missed that larger-than-life oil portrait on his left. Good grief. There was the High Priestess in all her glory, flying in a chariot along the banks of what was presumably the Nile, based on the Sphinx over her shoulder—a bosomy Teuton with Kewpie-doll lips and platinum hair oiled in marcel waves. The caption over her head blazed HELGA—SENTINEL OF ANTIQUITY! She made the Wurst King look modest. And in the corner, mounted on a marble pillar, an enormous bust straight out of a Norse myth: a woman warrior in winged helmet, long braids. A Valkyrie—with Helga’s face.

  From what Willi could make out in the dim candlelight, the membership appeared affluent enough in tailored suits and smart leather accessories, middle-aged mainly, though some looked not much older than students. Some artist types. Definitely no children, though he couldn’t exactly stare. Oddly, he noticed, no one was paying much attention to anyone else. Silence reigned as the women headed through one door and the men another.

  He took a deep breath and followed.

  Inside, he was surprised to find himself in a dark chamber among a small throng of men in various stages of undress. Apparently, one was supposed to trade one’s street clothes—all of them, from the bare asses he saw—for a black robe hanging on one of the hooks. These floor-length things, Willi could see from those already in them, had hoods that nearly concealed the face.

  Did he really have to do this?

  He could flash his badge of course, demand to be taken to Helga. But then he would never find out what was happening here. To beguile the time, look like the time, he thought. Off came the shoes, the tie and jacket. The trousers. At the last second, though, instead of butt naked, he slipped the robe atop his underwear, breathing a sigh of relief when it went unnoticed. He had no intention of walking around without even shorts on. But no one seemed the least concerned about him. They were all too busy preparing to ascend a circular staircase at the far end of the room.

  Feeling completely aberrant in this hooded outfit—a Jew in monk’s robes—he joined the pilgrimage, climbing around and around until halfway up it struck like lightning: his Kripo badge. He’d left it in his jacket pocket. He turned, determined to retrieve it, but saw the narrow staircase full of men behind. If he didn’t want to cause a scene, he was going to have to keep going.

  Dear Lord. He really felt naked now.

  Four full flights led to what had to be a rooftop penthouse, a dark auditorium drenched in mauve light. No chairs, only pillows on a carpeted floor, which was quickly filling with seated figures. Entering from an opposite staircase was another procession in hooded robes, only in white—the women. At the front, several steps led to what appeared to be an altar draped in blue satin curtains. Atop it a winged lion painted glittery gold looked vaguely Babylonian. Two of the walls had murals depicting sunrises over the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Corny, and plenty costly. The dues around here were probably astronomical, he surmised.

  A few minutes before the clock struck five a tom-tom started beating. Then a flute, floating through the air. Softly at first, then louder, the congregation began chanting: “Mazdaznan … Mazdaznan…”

  Were these the same Berliners he’d seen minutes earlier—hurrying down Bleibtreu Strasse in their tailored outfits? Perhaps it wasn’t surprising, Willi thought—with all the amazing advances in wireless communication, brain chemistry, atomic physics—that urban sophisticates might be drawn to the primitive and mystical, the metaphysical, especially now when the rug was being pulled out from under them, everything solid liquefying. But this group really seemed over the edge. It brought him back for a second to that crazy car ride home from the Admirals-Palast after they’d seen Josephine Baker. What had Dr. von Hessler meant, he was studying human fear?

  At five exactly, like magic, the blue curtains drew away from the altar. Helga the High Priestess appeared—sitting on a bed enclosed in some strange polyhedron-shaped cage. “Mazdaznan … Mazdaznan … Yasna Haptanghaiti…” The beating tom-tom seemed to waken her and gradually she rose, standing with her back to the congregation, slowly lifting both milky arms. “Aurora,” she cried. “Goddess of the Dawn—open your gates. Let Shamesh arise!”

  Willi had to keep from snickering. This was tackier than a Friedrich Strasse revue. Even with her back to them he could see Helga was no kid, but a mature woman in her forties, her ripe figure draped in a metallic-gold gown that left her shoulders and most of her back bare. She radiated power. Her voice. Her posture.

  At last she turned and faced her congregation, a siren from the wrong side of the tracks, her sultry smirk seeming to declare, What you see is what I made. And if you don’t like it—kiss my rear.

  Behind her, a sour-faced redhead Willi recognized as Brigitta drew back another set of curtains, unveiling a panorama of Berlin-West all the way to the Tiergarten, across which the first pink rays of dawn were just now falling. Raising some sort of scepter with one arm, Helga faced the city like a figure in a stained-glass window.

  “Torch of Heaven, Bride of the Gods. From you planets are born. From you life is nurtured. In the name of Titan, Helios, and Ra, we welcome you with Mazdaznan!”

  “Yasna Haptanghaiti!” the congregation returned.

  What an insane goulash of thirty dead religions, Willi thought. Though Helga dished it out with real panache.

  “The ancients”—she held her white arms out, seeming to offer succor—“believed that to enable the Divine Energy to ascend all thirty-three chambers of the spinal medulla and bring about absolute bliss, years of practice were required.”

  She smiled, cocking her head, implying how little those ancients knew. Then her gaze, scanning lovingly, affixed like two magnetic beams—on Willi. For a moment, the strangest quiver shot up his spine.

  “Today of course we have the Space Crystal, which enables us in a very short while to achieve what the ancients even with so much hard work had no guarantee of reaching—spiritual ecstasy. Yes. Inside the aura field of our polyhedron, our twenty-nine sacred movements galvanize the soul directly into contact with the Fourth Dimension.”

  Leading her flock through a series of stretches and toe touching, Helga shouted, “Flux and Flow! Feel the Light!” as the drumbeat intensi
fied, the movements quickening. “Remember: space does not exist!” Finally, as rising sunlight fell on the red silk bed, she announced, “Now is the time to fuel the unfurling cosmos.”

  It didn’t take long before Willi got the picture of what exactly in the cosmos was about to unfurl.

  On opposite walls the white and black robes began forming separate lines, the subliminal tension mounting to overt anticipation.

  “Ego’s death and arousal of Astral Body climaxes in the Angelic State!”

  Helga nodded to the first man and woman on each line. They dropped their robes and slowly, ceremoniously, stepped toward the Space Crystal. As they reached the red silk divan and climbed in together naked, everyone started chanting, “Yasna Haptanghaiti … Yasna Haptanghaiti…”

  Weird. And disturbing. But not criminal, as far as Willi could tell. Consenting men and women were free to do as they wanted in this country. Clearly the child abuse accusation was unjustified, since there wasn’t a kid in the place. And not a drop of animal blood. In ten years of marriage, though, he’d never cheated on Vicki, and he had no intention of starting now. But what an inspired racket, he thought. A celestial sex club. People paid to screw anonymously and feel they were getting enlightened.

  High Priestess Helga, he noticed, whispered something to Brigitta, then ducked out a side door. Thank you, God, he thought. My exit visa. He counted to ten, then, yanking his robe so he wouldn’t trip, slipped through the door after her. Tiptoeing down a long flight of steps, he felt ridiculous in his getup but more determined than ever to corner this babe. He’d been on her trail for months already.

  At the bottom of a long, carpeted staircase, down a dark hall, he spotted a glint of her gold gown disappear through a doorway. Hugging the wall he inched forward, almost too late noticing the chair across from her room with a big mustached man in it. The same red turban who’d let them in downstairs. A bodyguard, naturally. He pressed into an alcove.

  Now what?

  The ceiling all but trembled with groaning couples copulating evidently right overhead. Willi broke into a sweat. He remembered Vicki’s expression when he told her he was scouting out this place. If she ever saw him now … Wiping his forehead, he realized he could make out the guard’s image in a brass vase across the hall. The mustached fellow was just sitting there, tapping his foot. A fine spot. He couldn’t exactly go back upstairs. And how long could he stand here without being seen? Fate, however, or perhaps human nature, finally took a hand. The turbaned man found the sexual goings-on upstairs too stimulating to ignore apparently and began underneath his tunic working to relieve himself. Willi closed his eyes. Moans were coming from all sides now, testing his endurance. Luckily, it wasn’t long before he heard a muffled yelp and some panting, then, opening his eyes, he saw the turban waddle down the hall and disappear into what presumably was a bathroom.