The Secret of Lions

by Scott Blade

  At least I can still feel my toes, he thought. The relief of knowing that he was only temporarily paralyzed gave him some comfort.

  The feeling of comfort was cut short, however, when he realized the escaping prisoners were still in his proximity. He looked around, searching for any clue as to which direction they would approach from. He feared an ambush. Vigilantly, he studied the darkness that surrounded him. He saw shuffling in the distance.

  The prisoners saw a couple of dark figures clumped near each other on the ground. Armed with shivs, the two prisoners crept over to attack Heinrik.

  Heinrik heard them getting closer. Quickly, he pulled himself upright. The bones in his legs crackled as he turned toward the approaching prisoners. He let out a shriek. He knew that they were coming to kill him. He had to find a weapon.

  Hoping that Alexander’s gun fell with them, Heinrik frantically began dragging himself toward Alexander’s body. In the darkness, Heinrik could barely make out the shape of the gun on the ground. He was within inches of it when he heard the escapees getting closer. They were right behind him now.

  Moments before Heinrik was intercepted by the prisoners, he reached the gun. He rolled over onto his back and aimed the gun at the closest prisoner. He squeezed the trigger twice. The bullets ripped through the air and caught the first prisoner in the chest as he lunged toward Heinrik. He fell onto the ground.

  The second prisoner realized that Heinrik had a gun and began to retreat. A series of loud gunshots rang out from the guard posted on the other wall. He shot the second prisoner with a sniper rifle. The prisoner's body fell to the ground near Heinrik.

  Heinrik lowered the gun and rested his arm. He took a deep breath. He could not believe he had survived the entire ordeal. Suddenly, Alexander came to life and wrapped his arms tightly around Heinrik’s neck, placing him in a headlock. The two men wrestled for the gun. Heinrik felt the air being strangled from his lungs. He fought hastily for the gun, but could barely focus.

  He felt his chest expanding as he fought to inhale. He still couldn't breathe. Heinrik reared his arm up into the air and came down hard. He elbowed Alexander straight in the gut. Alexander slightly loosened his grip. Heinrik leaned forward, trying to escape Alexander’s grasp. He had a small chance to escape and survive.

  Swiftly, Alexander tightened his hold around Heinrik’s neck. He pulled his arm tighter with his free hand, reinforcing his grip. This time Heinrik felt the headlock even tighter. He continuously and desperately elbowed Alexander.

  Blow after blow found its way into Alexander’s gut, among other areas of his torso. Soon Heinrik’s blows became weaker and weaker. Alexander’s grip became tighter and tighter. Heinrik closed his eyes and tried to breathe. He could not.

  What raced through his mind, I can only guess. I think he pictured my mother and his unborn son. He wondered if I would be artistic, like Gracy was. He wondered if I would be beautiful like she was. Heinrik wondered if I would be as perfect as he was in his dreams.

  My father died.

  39

  Hitler sat in a café in Berlin. He was accompanied by two lean, muscular men. The two men wore clean, dark leather jackets. They intimidated anyone who approached him.

  It was early in the morning. Berlin was a fast-paced city. People scurried up and down the streets, making their way to jobs, homes, and schools. He sat outside the café at a small patio table. The table was set for two, as if Hitler were waiting for someone. His guards sat behind him at another table, calmly and acutely in tune with everything that went on around them. They had a headcount of all the people in the café, including employees and people who walked the streets out front. They even fearlessly tasted Hitler’s tea before he took one sip from it.

  Hitler sat peacefully, like a child, drawing on a napkin. As he became more valuable to the Nazi party and more powerful in German politics, he had less and less time to be creative. So whenever he found himself waiting, he took the time as a perfect opportunity for him to create something, to draw one of his ideas.

  The waiter walked by to see if Hitler needed anything. He did not talk to Hitler; instead he simply walked close enough to the table to determine if the tea needed refilling. It did not. The glass was still full. Hitler had only sipped it a couple of times.

  The waiter was a kid. He was no more than 20 years old. He got a glimpse of the napkin Hitler was drawing on. The drawing was some sort of automobile design, like a schematic or blueprint. He became curious, which was something his supervisor had warned him against. He was told not to make any inquiries or draw attention to himself in any way while in the presence of Hitler. And above all other things, he was warned not to make eye contact with Hitler.

  Hitler noticed that the young waiter kept lingering near him. The waiter stared at his sketch. At first, Hitler pretended he did not see the boy. Quickly, however, he changed his demeanor and sharply cocked his head toward the waiter.

  “Come here, young man,” Hitler demanded.

  The waiter’s nerves tensed with fear. He realized he had been caught staring. Terrified, the waiter slowly approached Hitler’s table as if he were walking blindfolded in front of a firing squad. He stood completely still, as if he were under inspection by his commanding officer, the head waiter.

  “Are you looking at my drawing?” Hitler asked.

  “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir,” the waiter replied.

  “It’s okay. Do you know what it is?”

  “No,” the waiter said, still scared.

  He sensed that Hitler wanted him to ask about it. Perhaps even to seem more interested than he really was. He decided that it would be best for him to play along. “It looks like a car. But it is unlike any car that I’ve ever seen.”

  “That’s right. This car’s design is for a future model. Only a German company could make this. See how the top of it is completely curved like the shell of a turtle?” Hitler asked, while sliding his finger over the drawing of the car’s roof.

  “Yes, I see it. What is the purpose of that?”

  Hitler started to look agitated. He looked over at one of his guards. The bodyguard was quick to respond. Within seconds he was standing directly behind the waiter. He was not a tall man, about 1.75 meters, but he looked threatening.

  “The purpose of the curved roof is to make the car more aerodynamic. This will allow the car to glide right through air resistance more quickly. Air resistance can hinder the vehicle’s movement,” Hitler said proudly.

  “That sounds incredible,” the waiter said. A strong, nervous feeling came over him as he felt heavy breathing on the back of his neck. It was from the bodyguard who stood in proximity to him.

  “Yes, now leave me alone,” Hitler said, looking back down at the drawing with a sense of achievement.

  A tall man stood at the edge of the walkway that led up to the café. He stared at Hitler for a moment as if he waited for the signal to approach. Hitler acknowledged him after the waiter had vanished.

  The tall man walked over to Hitler and sat across from him at the table. The early shadows of the morning followed him. His features never became clear to anyone who was around; although, Hitler knew him well. In fact, he was one of the only people in the world Hitler trusted with his darkest secrets.

  The man leaned forward from the shadow for only a moment. It was long enough for Hitler to see his features. They were cold and unflinching. The man had the darkest eyes. Hitler alone could hear his words. The man said, “It is done. The husband is dead.”

  “Good. Thank you, Beowulf,” Hitler said to the tall man.

  Beowulf was the only name he was known by. It was because he was a man whom many feared and few knew what he looked like. He was more like Grendel from the Beowulf poem, but they called him Beowulf.

  Beowulf and Hitler spent the rest of the morning planning the future of Hitler’s political ambitions. Besides designing more aerodynamic automobiles and thinking about art, he also contemplated the future for him and Gracy Kessler, m
y mother.

  It would take some time, but Hitler knew he could win her over. He knew a pregnant woman, widowed, and Jewish would not make it long without his help, not in the world he wanted to create. No one Jewish would make it without his help. No one.

  40

  Heinrik and Gracy’s bedroom was white with brown trim. The trim bordered around the ceiling and the walls. The room was abnormally chilly. Gracy slept in her nightgown. It was a flowing, yellow-tinted gown.

  She sat up in her bed. She waited for Heinrik. His side of the bed was cold and undisturbed from when she had made the bed the previous morning. She felt a sense of emptiness. It was a feeling she was not used to. Heinrik had not come home. She did not know why. But she knew that she could not leave the house. She was pregnant. Their son kicked in her belly.

  She spent most of the morning wondering when he would come home. She continually stared at the empty space on their bed. She decided to get up and start her day without him, so she rose from the bed and went into the kitchen.

  She brewed some tea and walked out onto the porch. Heinrik’s favorite chair rocked ever so slightly from a cool breeze that swept through their neighborhood. She never sat in it when he was around. She decided since he was missing their morning routine, she would usurp his chair while he was gone.

  The old rocking chair squeaked as she sat down in it. Heinrik’s father had made it many years ago. It was plain, nothing special about its design. The unusual thing about it was that Heinrik’s father was not a carpenter. He had barely any talent in the matter. So what was so special about this chair was that it was the only piece of furniture that Heinrik’s father ever made that had survived for so long.

  As uneven as the chair was, it was important to Heinrik and to Gracy. She sat in the chair and watched the morning sky while sipping on her mug filled with tea. She liked to use a coffee mug to drink her tea.

  Heinrik drank coffee, black. Gracy thought that it made him look tough, but black coffee was unappetizing to her. It made her stomach turn. She thought it had the same effect on Heinrik because whenever he drank his coffee before breakfast, he would wind up skipping most of his meal.

  Gracy must have realized while drinking her tea that she had inadvertently started making his coffee.

  Even though Gracy and Heinrik had spent the last several years saving money to move into a lake house in Tegern Lake, they had remained in the city. They were close to having the down payment for the lake house, but not quite there yet.

  Gracy’s mind wandered for a moment until the sounds of an approaching car startled her. She looked up toward the street and saw a car fast approaching her small apartment. It was a government car. It parked directly in front of her building. The driver got out and walked to the back of the car. He opened the door, and Heinrik’s boss, the prison warden, stepped out.

  The moment Gracy saw him without Heinrik, she jumped to her feet so fast that she virtually landed on her toes. Her body trembled. She knew what was coming. It was the nightmare she had locked away in the pit of her mind. She knew it in the pit of her stomach as well as in her womb where her unborn baby grew: His father was dead.

  She knew Heinrik was dead. She knew Willem would never know his real father.

  41

  A black, almost reptilian-looking casket held the body of Gracy’s beloved. Heinrik’s funeral was a closed-casket ceremony, which was intended only for close friends and family. Gracy sat alone in the front aisle next to her parents. She stared at the casket. The man she loved was in the box.

  The funeral was full of people, mostly new faces. They were people that she’d never even known had cared about her husband. They included guards, former guards, distant family members, her parents, friends, the warden, some state officials, a couple of old war buddies, and even some former prisoners.

  The one figure that stood out the most in Gracy’s mind was a man who stood in the back, far away and almost out of sight. He stood with a pair of bodyguards. It was a face she had prayed never to lay eyes on again, but he was there nevertheless.

  The face belonged to Adolf Hitler.

  42

  Even though Gracy had spent the entire, harrowing experience staring at that ghastly box, she could not get Hitler out of her mind. She knew he rested his eyes upon her and nowhere else. She did not know his true intentions, but she knew they involved her. And she feared him for it.

  After the funeral was over, one of Hitler’s guards approached Gracy.

  “Frau Kessler, may I have a few minutes of your time?” the guard asked.

  Gracy stared beyond the guard for a long moment at the dark figure that stood in the distance. She knew the figure was Hitler. It made her gape back into the guard’s eyes.

  “Fuck off,” she muttered. She pushed past him and rejoined the crowd of family members where she felt safe. She did not look back at him, not for one small instant, for fear that Hitler would misinterpret her gaze as a sign of interest in hearing what he had to tell her.

  43

  A sharp, intense pain in her stomach woke Gracy abruptly. She rolled out of bed and ran to the bathroom. Her throat tightened, making it excruciating when she vomited just before she could reach the toilet. Some got on the floor. A second batch made it into the sink.

  Again she tried to make it to the toilet, but before she could reach it, she felt a piercing pain in her abdomen. She grabbed her side and fell. She vomited once more, so violently that she hit her head on the tile. The impact of the floor against her forehead caused darkness to overcome her. Within moments Gracy blacked out.

  Gracy came around twenty minutes later. She sat up unsteadily, trying not to move too much. She had never been pregnant before, but she imagined any trauma to her body would be hard on the baby.

  Suddenly, a blanket of fiery worry about the baby engulfed her. She became stricken with concern over the pregnancy and the life of her baby. She’d lost Heinrik already and was terrified by the possibility of losing Willem too. She feared that her state of grief might affect the birth of her son.

  Her first instinct was to go to see the doctor.

  When she felt comfortable enough to stand, she decided it would be best for her to skip breakfast and her bath and head straight to the clinic. She and Heinrik had a special doctor who was a friend of her parents. Even though he worked in a public clinic, he held a good reputation. Dr. Levinson was a sought-after doctor even by the prominent German families who hated the Jews.

  44

  At the doctor’s office, Gracy waited patiently for the doctor to come into the examining room to talk to her. She no longer felt the pain in her stomach, and after vomiting, she felt that whatever it was that had hurt was not coming back. Her insides were evacuated. She was relieved of that fact.

  The doctor finally entered the room. He was a short man, wearing a tattered, white coat with visible holes on the outside of the pockets. Gracy could see his fingertips piercing though the holes.

  “Frau Kessler, how are you?”

  “I feel okay now, doctor, but this morning I felt sick,” Gracy said.

  “Did you vomit?”

  “Yes, Dr. Levinson. I threw up three or four times,” she answered him.

  “Hmm,” he said. He pulled a stool up to her and began asking questions. “How long did the pain in your stomach last? What did you eat?”

  After several minutes of questioning my mother, the doctor started writing notes on a chart attached to a brown clipboard. As he was writing, he began talking with her. The conversation was just small talk.

  “Gracy, did you ever get that lake house?”

  “Not yet, doctor,” she answered.

  “Gracy, have you thought of a name for the baby?”

  “I like Willem,” she said.

  “That’s a nice name,” the doctor said.

  “Thanks,” she replied.

  “Gracy, how is Heinrik? Is he still working at Landsberg prison?”

  Gracy sat silent. Her eyes welle
d up and tears began falling out.

  “Gracy?” the doctor asked without looking up from his clipboard.

  “He’s dead,” she finally answered.

  The doctor stopped writing and looked up at her. He had forgotten.

  “I’m so sorry, Gracy,” he said.

  Gracy mumbled something that the doctor could not make out.

  “I didn’t know,” he lied.

  She knew he was lying. She felt it.

  After a long, awkward moment between them, the doctor finally returned to writing. He said, “Willem is a fine name. You are fine, Gracy. There is nothing wrong with the baby. He’s going to grow into a fine young man.” He stood and began to lead her out of the examining room. Before they reached the lobby, he stopped her. “Gracy,” he began saying.

  “Yes, doctor,” she answered.

  “Willem is a fine name,” he repeated.

  Gracy nodded and walked out into the lobby. She tried to pay the doctor’s bill, but the nurse at the counter said not to worry about it. She told her to pay next time.

  Gracy lowered her head and walked out of the doctor’s office.

  Willem is a fine name, she thought. A fine name.

  45

  Gracy sat out on the apartment’s front porch. She sat on the steps near a small garden. She worked in it, grooming the flowers and plants she’d planted last fall. Heinrik would sit on the porch, rocking in his chair. Sometimes he would read the paper if they could afford one that week or he would just read the same old books over and over. He particularly enjoyed adventure books like Treasure Island or The Count of Monte Cristo. Mostly he stared at Gracy, and she never noticed, but that was what he did.

  The sky around the city was gloomy and overcast. The sun stayed hidden far above her. The rain was coming. She knew it. She could feel it deep in her bones. Gracy had always had a sense of premonitions. With Heinrik around, they calmed down significantly.