Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  As he placed his old copy of Søren Kierkegaard’s Gospel of Suffering down upon the surface of the desk in his study, he reflected that Kierkegaard would have despised him. The Danish philosopher had spent his life battling the fossilized established LutheranChurch in defense of what he perceived as Christian truth, much as Martin Luther himself had battled the corrupt Catholicism of the Renaissance centuries earlier. Weyrauch knew that had he lived in Kierkegaard’s Denmark, he would have been one of those pastors who feared annoying the bishops, who would rather see Kierkegaard be censured than themselves be inconvenienced by supporting him. And had he lived in 16th century Germany, he would never have supported Luther during the Protestant Reformation... until, of course, the ruler of whatever German state he lived in decided to accept Luther’s reforms, at which time Weyrauch would have kept his mouth shut and would have done what he was told.

  He had been keeping his mouth shut and had been doing what he was told ever since Hitler and his thugs had taken power in Germany eleven years before. He knew that the Nazis were ignoramuses. He knew that the so-called GermanChurch under the leadership of the Reich Bishop was nothing more than a heretical sham Hitler had created in an attempt to control the Protestant majority in the population. He knew that as a Christian he should have been one of the ministers who supported Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhöffer and the others in the anti-Nazi ConfessionalChurch, the true, legitimate ProtestantChurch in Germany. He knew that he had a responsibility as a clergyman to speak out against the tyranny and the corruption and the arrests and the murders and the persecution and the concentration camps and the war machine of the Third Reich.

  He did none of these things. He kept his mouth shut and he did what he was told.

  And though he despised himself for his cowardice, he made no attempt to alter his behavior so as to raise his self-esteem; for the reluctance to act when one knows that action is called for is of all forms of cowardice the most insidious and the least likely to be transcended.

  Weyrauch closed the door of his study and walked out toward the kitchen of the parsonage, where his wife would be making breakfast. He was a man with a youngish face, fast approaching middle age but still somehow boyish looking. His watery brown eyes seemed forever fixed upon some private, inner sorrow, but his ready, toothy smile and ruddy complexion projected a permanent aura of good cheer. He was in all respects, physical as well as ontological, a man of the middle, without extremes. His light brown hair was thinning with age, but he was nowhere near bald. He was solid enough to indicate that he ate and drank well, but he was far from portly. He was forty years old and looked thirty to most people, until they learned his true age, at which time they decided that he did indeed look forty. He was a man who did not attract attention to himself, and that was one key to survival in Nazi Germany.

  He sat down at the wooden table in the small, cluttered but immaculately clean kitchen and smiled over at his wife Louisa, who was slicing the rich, black bread on a free standing chopping block beside the sink. "Good morning, liebchen," he said. "You certainly look lovely this morning."

  Louisa von Weyrauch shot him a cold, withering look, and he fell immediately silent. He gazed down at his hands, folded them on the table, and began to twiddle his thumbs. Louisa piled the sliced bread onto a platter, carried it over to the table, and dropped it down upon the wooden surface with a loud and resounding thud. "Frau Neumann came over this morning to talk to you," she said, her voice even and unaffectionate. "You were taking your morning walk at the time. I told her to come back later." Louisa poured herself a cup of the ersatz concoction which passed for coffee in Germany in 1944. "She was very upset. Devastated, in fact."

  "Why?" Weyrauch asked as he slapped some lard onto a slice of bread, there being no butter. "What’s wrong?"

  "Her son Rudi was killed last week in Norway. The army just informed her today." She sipped quietly from her coffee cup.

  "Oh, that’s terrible," Weyrauch said. "The poor boy. He was only...how old was he? Nineteen?"

  "Eighteen," she corrected him. "Only in the army a few months, and now he’s dead, just like his father last year."

  "Well," he sighed, "I must pay a visit later, a condolence call. Rudi didn’t come to church very often, but his mother always does." He paused and thought for a moment. "Norway," he muttered. "I thought everything was quiet up there. I thought our problems were all in the east and the south..."

  "He was killed by a sniper," she interrupted. "For some reason, people seem to object to having their countries invaded and occupied."

  "Yes, yes, of course," he muttered.

  "And please don’t talk about ‘our problems’," she went on bitterly. "Our problem is our government. Our problem is that rabid animal in the Chancellery, not the resistance of innocent conquered people." Her voice broke slightly, and she seemed about to weep.

  He reached over without thinking to touch her arm comfortingly. "Now, now, my dear..."

  She pulled her arm away and glared at him. "Why in God’s name are we still living here, Gottfried? If you don’t have the backbone to stand up to these people, why at least don’t we leave the country?"

  "Louisa, my dear, we’ve discussed this before. You know as well as I do that I have responsibilities here in Kappelburg. I can’t just pack up and..."

  "Oh, Gottfried, spare me the homily!" she spat. "You’re hiding behind your collar, just like you always do."

  "That isn’t fair, Louisa," he said softly, trying not to become angry at her for speaking the words which he himself so often thought.

  "It isn’t fair?!" she asked, her eyes wide with feigned surprise. "It isn’t fair?! Don’t tell me that you’ve suddenly developed a devotion to justice!"

  "Louisa..." he muttered darkly.

  "If you’re content to bow and scrape to the Nazis, that’s all fine and good for you. But you could at least consider me for a moment." She leaned forward and shouted in his face, "I want to leave Germany, Gottfried! I want to get away from this insane asylum we live in!"

  "And go where?" he asked, growing angry himself. They had had this conversation a hundred times. "And do what?"

  "Switzerland," she said, as she always said. "Why can’t you try to get a parish in Switzerland? Good Lord, Gottfried, you hold a doctoral degree in Theology. Why can’t you find a seminary to teach in? You’re a doctor of medicine. Teach in a medical school, or start a practice! You have training in psychiatry, and Jung is in Switzerland. Go and work with him!"

  "Louisa," he said, "we can’t just pack up and leave. It isn’t that easy…"

  "Not for a woman married to a man like you," she spat. "When I think of what could have been..."

  He threw the slice of bread down upon the table, smearing the lard across the faded alpine table cloth. "Louisa, stop!" he shouted. "I will not listen to your litany of regrets any longer!"

  "And why not?" she demanded. "Do you expect me to believe that you don’t run them through your mind yourself every day? Don’t you wonder what our lives would have been like if we had gone to join Schweitzer in Africa after you received your medical degree, like you always said you were going to do?"

  "Louisa..."

  "Don’t you feel ashamed of yourself when you hear the things that my old friend Dietrich has been saying and doing?"

  "Your precious Bonhöffer will end up in a concentration camp," he said. "You mark my words."

  "Perhaps he will, and perhaps they’ll kill him someday, but he’ll die on his feet, not on his knees!"

  "I kneel to no one!" he shouted.

  "You don’t have to," she shouted back. "You’re already lying on your face, licking their feet!"

  "Is it your great goal in life, Louisa, to be a young widow? What on earth do you expect me to do? Preach against the government from my pulpit? Try to kill the Führer?"

  "Try to do something, Gottfried, anything! At the very least, leave!"

  "I should point out, Louisa, that you talk a very good resistan
ce," he shouted. "I don’t see you doing anything about the Nazis, other than making my life miserable."

  "At least I’m willing to say that what is happening is wrong," she shouted back. "At least I have the intelligence to want to get away from it. My God, Gottfried, don’t you see what’s happening to the world?"

  "Yes, I see what’s happening," he said coldly as he rose from the table, leaving his meager breakfast uneaten. "The world is falling apart, as it always is, and I am trying to persevere and survive it."

  "Oh, Gottfried," she sighed, her anger suddenly giving way to depression and despair. "Don’t you have any self-respect?"

  "Of course I do," he muttered, walking to the door. "And I also have common sense." He walked from the kitchen, out through the parlor to the front door, and slammed it behind him.

  Louisa closed her eyes and prayed silently for patience and self control. She was furious with her husband, as she always was. He disgusted her, as he always did. And she felt the same desperate helplessness she always felt after such conversations. And he had stung her by reminding her that, her ideals and ethics notwithstanding, she had done as little as he to oppose the Nazis.

  I could leave Germany all by myself, she thought, go to Switzerland alone. I could contact Dietrich, try to help somehow, try to do something, something. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and covering her face with her hands. No I couldn’t, she thought. I suppose that I’m just as frightened as Gottfried, frightened of being alone, frightened of being arrested, frightened of being killed. Perhaps I expect too much of him, she thought. Perhaps by comparing him with Dietrich, I’m holding him up to an impossible ideal. Perhaps at this stage of our lives there’s nothing that we can do. When we were younger, when he was a young seminarian and I was a young humanities student, before Hitler was in power, before the Enabling Act that established the dictatorship, before the Nuremberg Laws that established official anti-Semitism, before the war...that was when we should have done something, that was when we should have tried to... tried to...

  Her thought died unfinished. Should have done what? she wondered, and felt a pang of guilt at the anger she felt for her husband. We supported the correct parties, she thought, I the Social Democrats and he the Progressives, two different parties but both opposed to Hitler and the Nationalists. I was too young to vote, but Gottfried voted, and we both campaigned and rallied and handed out literature. What else could we have done, what else could he have done? Perhaps Gottfried is right. Perhaps all we can do now is try to survive.

  Almost immediately, she rebelled against her own reflections. No, she thought as she picked the largely unused breakfast dishes up from the table and placed them in the sink. No, he isn’t right. We can take the risk of disobedience; we can at least not pretend that we think that what is happening is right. At the very least, at the very, very least, we could leave the country, we could at least try to leave the country…

  The telephone rang, and she went to answer it. Not everyone had a telephone in their house, but the Weyrauchs did. It was deemed necessary for a minister to be able to easily to contact his superiors, his church building, the government’s Ministry of Cults...Lord, how that name bothered her!...the hospitals, and other places where his services might be needed; and, of course, it made it easier for all these agencies to contact him as well.

  Louisa picked up the phone and said, "Hello? Weyrauch residence."

  "Hello, dear," her mother’s voice said from the other end of the line. "Is everything all right?"

  Louisa sighed, not wishing to discuss her marital problems with her mother. "Yes, fine, Mother, just fine. Everything is just fine."

  "Are you getting along well with Gottfried?"

  She sighed again. "Wonderfully, Mother. Splendidly."

  "Good, I’m glad to hear it. You know, Louisa, I just can’t stop thinking about the argument you and Gottfried had last weekend when I was there for dinner. You really must be supportive of your husband, and not be so critical."

  "Yes, Mother."

  "I certainly hope you don’t behave that way when people from the parish are in your home. You have a responsibility as a minister’s wife, Louisa, and whatever else may be happening, you must keep any domestic problems to yourself."

  People are dying by the millions, she thought glumly, and Mother is worried about my committing a social faux pas. "Yes, Mother," was all she said. She had learned years before that arguing with her stubborn parent was an exercise in futility and frustration.

  Louisa muttered an occasional word of agreement and paid very little attention to what her mother was saying. She glanced out the front window of the parsonage and saw that her husband was standing outside on the pavement, looking down the street. Louisa watched him for a moment and then sighed. Why are we still here, Gottfried? she thought miserably. Why in God’s name have we stayed in Germany?

  Weyrauch had intended to eat breakfast and then take a nap, but he now found himself standing on the street with nowhere to go. Having made a rather dramatic exit, he would have felt foolish walking right back into the house, and he stood motionless for a few moments as he wondered what he should do next. Then he remembered that he had a pastoral obligation to offer words of comfort to poor Frau Neumann, so he turned and began to walk toward the Neumann home.

  "Dietrich Bonhöffer," he muttered aloud as he strolled along the narrow cobblestone streets of the little Silesian village of Kappelburg. "I am so sick to death of hearing about Dietrich Bonhöffer." He knew that Louisa and the now rather well-known dissident minister had been friends since childhood, and it grated on him that she so obviously admired the man, admired him with the same intensity with which she despised her husband. "Why didn’t you marry him, then?" he muttered, addressing his absent wife, answering his own question in his mind.

  He remembered those days over a decade ago, when he as finishing his doctorate in Theology at the seminary at Erfurt. He had met Bonhöffer, then a young seminarian, after a lecture they had both attended, and it was through Bonhöffer that he had met Louisa Keimes. Bonhöffer was five years and Louisa a full decade younger than Weyrauch, and he found their youthful, enthusiastic idealism infectious, inspiring, invigorating. He thought back on his decision to attend medical school in preparation for joining Albert Schweitzer’s team of missionary physicians in French Equatorial Africa, and for the life of him could not remember if it had been his idea or Louisa’s. Had he made such a peculiar, uncharacteristically selfless plan in order to impress Louisa, or had he been so inspired by the passion of his young friends, a passion for changing the world, that he had taken his own words seriously? He simply could not remember. It was as if the Gottfried von Weyrauch of 1932 was a different person from the Gottfried von Weyrauch of 1944. That earlier Weyrauch had voted for the small, democratically oriented Progressive Party; he had been a vocal, outspoken critic of the Nazis; he had preached resistance to evil, he had ridiculed the nonsensical diatribes leveled at the Jews, had been a pillar of strength and a defender of truth. Louisa had fallen madly in love with him, had married him, had cherished him, respected him, looked up to him, loved him.

  All of this was before Hitler came to power, before standing up to the Nazis ceased to be theoretical and became downright hazardous. All of this was before Weyrauch began seriously to consider what life would be like in tropical Africa, without such basic creature comforts as hot and cold running water and beer gardens and good food. There was a new man inhabiting the body of Gottfried von Weyrauch, one whom Louisa detested, one with whom she had not been physically intimate for over seven years, one whom she would have divorced had she not disapproved of divorce on religious grounds. This new Weyrauch was an exemplar of two very important truisms. The first was that when faced with the desire for ease and comfort, the ideal of self-sacrifice tends to wither away. The second was that in the absence of danger, courage is common; when danger is present, courage is rare.

  At least, these things were true fo
r him.

  He arrived at the front door of the Neumann home and, after clearing his throat and straightening his clerical collar, he tapped the brass door knocker against it. He waited for a few moments and then knocked again. No one appeared to be home. Weyrauch reasoned that poor Frau Neumann, having found her pastor absent when she came by earlier that day, had gone to a friend’s house for some measure of support and condolence. Well, he thought, no matter. I’ll see her eventually and do whatever I can for her.

  He began to walk back toward his own house, feeling somehow relieved that he was not going to have to engage in the pastoral counseling which he knew the poor woman needed so badly at this tragic time. First her husband and now her only son, he thought, shaking his head. What a shame.

  There seemed to be a spring in his step as he strolled back along the medieval street, and he found his mood lifted by the cool morning air and the sounds of the birds singing in the trees that lined his way. As he drew close to his house he noticed that two soldiers of the S.S. were approaching from the other direction. His mind registered the fact that a black limousine was parked across the street from his door, but he did not connect the automobile with the soldiers. He was thinking to himself that his wife had misjudged him, that he was as brave as any man, that he would walk right by the two S.S. with his head held high and would give them a condescending and disapproving look as he passed them.

  Of course, all he did was crouch over very slightly, avert his eyes from them, and touch his fingers to his forehead in a tentative, pathetic salute. He opened his front door and walked into the parlor of the parsonage. Louisa was standing in the middle of the room, feather duster in hand, and he began to say something to her when he noticed that she was looking past him, her face reflecting a combination of fear and anger. He turned to find that the two S.S. soldiers had followed him to his front door, and that behind them, across the street, a third member of Hitler’s elite troops was standing beside the limousine.