Child of the Journey

by Berliner, Janet

  And suddenly there were sirens, and a Mercedes with Gestapo and guns and shots, and he was racing down an alleyway like a hunted animal.

  The next morning, one of his companions awoke him before dawn.

  "The Gestapo know what you look like," the youth said. "It is too dangerous for us--and for you--to stay here. Go to the corner of Kant and Niebuhrstrasse. Konnie will be waiting for you there. Don't say anything. Just get into the car."

  Misha did what he was told. By the end of the day he was ensconced at the home of Fräulein Miriam's dressmaker in Baden-Baden, where Konnie had driven him on the pretext of taking her several bolts of fabric to make into dresses for Miriam for the upcoming holiday season. The trip across the country and south was a long one, but the car was comfortable and warm, and he slept most of the way. It was dark when they got there and he was hungry.

  Madame Pérrault fed him at once. She was a pretty woman, bright, cheerful, and practical. He liked her.

  The next morning, she put him to work at the button-covering machine to earn his keep. To his surprise, he enjoyed the work.

  The machine looked something like the microscope at school, except that the top was hinged. There was an indentation on the ledge for a metal shell, and another in the lever.

  Madame Pérrault would hand him scraps of fabric that matched the outfits she was sewing. He laid a scrap on the ledge, pressed in a shell, and covered it over with the fabric. Then he inserted a smaller shell into the lever and pressed down.

  The top fitted into the bottom and became a covered button which she could trim and attach to the clothing of her wealthy customers.

  He quickly developed a rhythm and produced, she said, more buttons each hour than she could make in a day.

  He expected to be hidden away, in a place like the sewer. To his surprise, Madame Pérrault simply told him to be careful not to talk to strangers, bedded him down in a small attic room where she stored her supplies, and introduced him as her cousin's son, come to visit from the city. He was well fed and reasonably well clothed. She patched his trousers, kept his shirt clean, and treated him with kindness.

  Still, she was not his mama.

  When Fräulein Miriam returned with Konnie, she returned the bolts of cloth, had a brief discussion with the seamstress about patterns, and took him into the garden.

  "I have no news for you," she said, kneeling before him. "You must be patient."

  "I want to come back to Berlin with you."

  "You are safe here, Mishele." She stroked his head. "Is Madame not treating you well?"

  "That's not it at all," he said, staring her down. "I want to be there when you find my mama and papa."

  She sighed heavily. "I thought you understood, Misha. The chances are we will not find them. Berlin is a dangerous place. You are better off right here."

  "Then I will walk to Berlin. I will. Truly. I want to come...home."

  "But I can't take care of you," Miriam said. "Herr Freund, the man to whom you delivered my message, is in the sewer."

  "I can stay with him in the sewer. Please."

  "I cannot get him out, let alone get you in," she said.

  "Please."

  She looked as if she were about to say something more, but remained silent. He took that to mean yes. Remembering his manners, he went indoors to say farewell and thank you to his hostess who looked shocked, kissed him, and said he could return any time he wished.

  He went outside to the car. It was gone. Only his earlier resolve kept him from bursting into tears.

  "Sometime around Christmas I will have to go to Berlin myself for fabrics and threads, and to visit family," Madame Pérrault said. "If you still want to return, I will take you with me."

  Reassured, but still angry at what he saw as Miriam's betrayal, Misha settled back into the routine of the household. Days passed, then more than a week, not unpleasantly, and as it did, so did his anger. He remembered how Miriam signaled him away on the day the beadle left, and then rescued him. He remembered her explanation and her kindnesses. When the time came for Madame Pérrault to make her trip, he had almost forgotten his anger.

  But he had not forgotten why he had to return to Berlin.

  "I cannot take you to Fräulein Miriam," she said, when he reiterated his wish to go with her. "She has more than enough worries. I will have to take you back to the underground. They will take you in if you are willing to be a messenger for them again."

  "But the Gestapo...?"

  "By now, hopefully, they have forgotten you."

  "Do the others know that I am coming back?" Misha asked.

  "Perhaps yes, perhaps no. I sent word, but I have not had confirmation. You will have to take your chances."

  "Will you tell her where I am?"

  "Of course. She would want to know."

  At the end of the day, with a quick kiss, a hug, and a wish for his safety, Madame Pérrault pressed a bag of food into his hands and deposited him on the sidewalk, two blocks from the flats on Kantstrasse. Behind him he heard her say quietly, "Merry Christmas, boy. Happy Hanukkah."

  Suddenly afraid, remembering no-neck and the sound of jackboots and gunshots, Misha ran the two blocks in the darkness of what he now realized was Christmas Eve. Though he slunk into the building and tried to be quiet, his footsteps echoed hollowly in the deserted stairwell.

  When he reached the flat, he found the door ajar. The place had been ransacked and there was no one there. Terrified, careless of his own safety, he charged down the stairs and away from the building. When he stopped running, he found himself at the fence of a small, concrete school playground on Niebuhrstrasse. At the back of the playground, he could see a large tree, beneath which stood a cluster of garbage cans. He scooted over the fence and headed straight for them.

  Upending one of them, which happened to be empty because, he supposed, of school holidays, he crawled inside and, despite the freezing cold, fell into a sleep filled with nightmares of fat men with boots and guns and no neck. He awoke at dawn to the sound of Christmas church bells. Shivering and stiff with cold, and silently thanking Madame Pérrault, he opened the bag of food and ate a roll and a piece of sausage and tried to plan his next move.

  All he could think of was Fräulein Miriam and the sewer safe-house. He waited as long as he was able, hoping some other idea would come to him. Finally, driven by the cold, he crawled from his hiding place, scaled the fence, and started toward the tobacco shop. When he got there, the lights were on and the door was ajar.

  Thank God, he thought, bursting into the shop. "Fräulein Miriam," he said. "Help me. Please. You must hide me in the sewer with Herr Freu--"

  Hands gripped him from behind and turned him around. He had not noticed the two men sitting at the table in the corner, a miniature Christmas tree and two brandy snifters between them on the table. The one leaning forward to hold him looked like an older version of the uniformed man with whom Fräulein Miriam had breakfasted that morning at the Kempinski Café; the other wore the uniform of the men who had chased him down the alley. Misha stared at his hair, which shone as brightly silver as the tinsel on the miniature tree.

  "So that's where he is," the man who held him said. "I might have known."

  "What a charming looking youth," the silver-haired man said, smiling. He motioned for the older man to release the boy and, taking hold of Misha's wrist with one hand, tussled Misha's hair. "And how fortuitous that he should bring us this information. I will leave you to take care of him for me, Friedrich, while we take care of our morning business."

  Misha struggled against the grip of the man who held him.

  "Don't be afraid," the silver-haired soldier said. "We're here to help."

  "He is a handful," the other man said.

  Misha craned his neck to look outside and prayed desperately that he would see Fräulein Miriam headed toward the shop. His view was blocked by the ugly, no-neck man, who was leaning casually against the plate-glass storefront, smoking a fat cigar.
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br />   He stopped struggling.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Thirst. The faucet in the sub-basement beckoned like a mirage. He lay on the crating, lost in vertigo, suffocating in the stench, listening to his own panting. The darkness wheezed with each breath. His mouth worked spasmodically, like that of a sleeping infant searching for the breast. Sometimes he ran a hand along the slick wall so contact with physical reality outside himself would tell him he was still alive. His muscles, lacking water, ached; his scalp itched with lice or fleas. He had clawed, scratched, torn at his clothes, but the insects continued feasting.

  Finally he crawled from the drain to the antique sinks in the sub-basement corner beneath the stairs. One of the tap handles had rusted off; the other, though loose, was intact. He used a packing-crate endboard for a pry bar. The handle turned, protesting and squealing. Belching, groaning, the tap dribbled--then gushed.

  The water, rusty, burned his parched throat. He retched, spat, cursed the plumbing as he let the tap run, then cupped his hands and slurped. The metallic taste was still present. Though he knew what drinking rust might cause, he filled his canteen and tried shutting off the tap. The handle spun loosely in its collar.

  Putting a thumbnail in the headscrew to secure it, he pressed down on the handle. A major victory--the only casualty one-half of a thumbnail. Now the tap fizzed like weak soda water.

  For a moment he felt like sneaking up the stairs and peering under the cabaret door as he had as a child, when he had first seen Miriam--the featured performer at a private party her grandmother had thrown in the cabaret--but common sense won out, and he lowered himself back into the drain.

  He slept fitfully and awoke feverish, his guts gripped by a steel hand. He drew up his legs and pushed his fists against his stomach, praying that the cramps would leave him.

  Warm wetness suddenly flowed between his thighs. Diarrhea. He might as well have filled the canteen with seawater.

  He picked himself up, his movements jerky, uncoordinated, a marionette with an unskilled master. What transcendence, he wondered bitterly, did the Kabbalah prescribe for lifting body rather than soul? How fortunate the composer who'd spent his life creating music in honor of Judaism, only to be killed by a Torah scroll which fell from its cabinet and struck him on the head. That seemed fitting for a scholar; rotting and dying in a sewer did not.

  He boosted himself onto the plank, lay dizzied and panting, then groped for the seabag. At the bottom were two crackers. He put one in his mouth, chewed, massaged his throat to get it down. Like force-feeding a reptile, he thought angrily.

  Faces shimmered in the blackness. *His father, in the rocker, floating above Friedrich Ebert Strasse by holding himself up by the Iron Cross ribbon around his neck. Then appeared Mutti and Recha, waving good-bye as a train streamed beyond the end of its tracks and sank with a hiss into the North Sea. Miriam, eyes smiling as she fellated Erich, who leaned nonchalantly against a tree, a German shepherd beside him on a choke chain.

  Rathenau. Shattered bone and flesh blackened by powder burns, a Reichsbanner handkerchief pinned to his cheek.

  Stop! Sol reached to squeeze the apparition into nothingness. Pinwheels of light exploded inside his head. Above him, boot heels clattered on concrete. He seized Rathenau by the throat.

  And lost his balance. Clutched the plank, upside-down like a sloth, he fell with a splash.

  He tried to climb from the seepage, but his hands slid down the wet wall and he toppled backward. When he arose, sputtering, he heard a hinge squeal. Light lanced into the blackness. He raised his hands to shield his eyes, begging a vision to come erase the nightmare of whatever new reality had invaded his awful domain.

  "You are right, Herr Weisser," someone said in a northern dialect. "There is a Jew in here--and he stinks like a pig!"

  Sol pawed at the light.

  "Merry Christmas, Jew," the man continued in Plattdeutsch. "Climb from your sty!"

  Delirium followed. He felt himself crawl onto the board and was yanked by the arms through the drain, then sent hurtling up the stairs. He staggered into the cabaret and collapsed. Someone said, "Jew football!" and kicked him in the ribs. He lay weeping on the floor. Before him lay shards of a wineglass, like the one he had crushed underfoot at the end of his and Miriam's marriage ceremony. He took hold of a shard, gripping it so tightly that it dug into his palm. Through his fog of pain and humiliation, he saw blood rise between his fingers. The sight of it brought a peculiar sense of relief: the pain felt sharp and clear. Clean. Self-inflicted, and returning to him a bit of dignity he had thought gone forever.

  The fog lifted from his eyes.

  "What day is it?" he gasped. "What date?"

  "Stinking Jew doesn't even know when Christmas is celebrated!"

  Again he was kicked. He doubled over in agony. So many days in the sewer. Weeks. The darkness had worked its black magic on his senses all too well.

  He looked up, saw Miriam's shawl draped around an autographed picture of Hitler.

  "Herr Freund?"

  A child in a ratty coat entered Sol's sight. Where had he seen the boy before? When?

  Blood trickled from the boy's nose. He was crying quietly. "I'm sorry, Herr Freund," he whispered. "I didn't mean to-- Those people in the tobacco shop...I thought they were your friends. I thought they would hide me down there again."

  "Whatever happened, it's all right," Sol whispered back as he struggled to stand. A soldier shoved him with a rifle and he went pitching up the metal stairs, but he reached back and took the boy by the hand before he stepped out of Kaverne and into the street.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  If I don't get out of the car right now, I'll be sick.

  Miriam tapped Konnie on the shoulder. "Let me off. Here. I'll walk the rest of the way to the shop."

  By the set of his back, Miriam knew he disapproved. That made two disapproving males in the last hour; Erich had insisted she did not look well and should stay home.

  Climbing from the car, she pulled her coat closed against the biting cold. Sick, all right; but not from the weather. Sick with worry. Sol--down there two weeks, with too little food and drink.

  Not that she had good news for him. Perón was apparently not in Germany. Last Sunday, she had tried to get down to the cellar, but the shop was never emptied of its beer-happy customers popping in from Kaverne. With the shop that busy, the Weissers had not gone to Mass. They had watched her every move, calling her back if she were out of sight even for seconds.

  Today would be equally busy, but it was Christmas. Surely the Weissers would go to Mass. It was only a matter of time until some soldier wandered down to the sub-basement, perhaps to sleep off a drunk, saw a candle within the sewer or heard a noise. Someone coughing. The shuffling of feet.

  She quickened her pace.

  "Merry Christmas!" a barrel-organ man called to her.

  "Merry Christmas." She slowed down and dug for a coin to deposit in his hat. On impulse, she said, "Come to the shop later. I'll find you a good cigar."

  He grinned and ground out the beginning notes of "O Tannenbaum." She walked on, head lowered against the wind.

  From a block away a siren blasted, drowning out the carol.

  She looked up.

  Konrad, disobeying her instructions to go home to his family and spend Christmas Day with them, had parked the touring-car up against the curb in front of the shop. He seemed to be signaling her to stay back.

  She stepped into the shelter of a doorway and waited as a car with SS insignia pulled up in front of Kaverne and three men got out. Two of them, rifles in hand, hurried down the cabaret steps. The third loitered at the sidewalk. She recognized him from the estate. She frowned, puzzled.

  Hadn't Erich said that Otto Hempel was now deputy commandant of the Sachsenhausen detention center? Had he flown that little plane of his back to Berlin to personally oversee an arrest?

  Oh my God, she thought. Sol. Flattening herself against the wall, she pressed her hand t
o her mouth to stifle a scream. Friedrich Weisser burst from the shop, dragging Misha by the hand. He and Hempel exchanged looks. He prodded Misha toward the steps, and the three of them disappeared.

  Frozen with fear and cold and nausea, she watched as a silent column of men, women and children, flanked by guards with shepherds, rounded the far corner.

  She had seen such lines before--emerging from side streets and alleys--guards and shepherds herding them along the avenue. Quiet Jews. Heads down. Men carrying satchels; women with babies bundled in lovingly crocheted shawls and patchwork blankets, as if El Greco, ordered to paint a tragedy in somber hues, had carelessly splashed his canvas with bright colors. They moved with the steady step of people headed for a train they knew would not leave without them. Some had children tagging along like exiles from a classroom. Others were murmuring thanks to God for giving them the foresight to have put their sons and daughters on the special trains to Amsterdam and Zurich.

  When the column stopped in front of Kaverne, not a person moved. No one murmured, or looked toward the cabaret. They know why they're stopping, she thought desperately. They've seen it too many times. They were in a funeral march, mourning themselves.

  Moments later Sol and Misha stumbled up the steps that led down to Kaverne and sprawled headlong into the street. Misha stood up first and stooped to help Sol. A guard shoved the boy aside and ordered the column to move on.

  Miriam bit into her gloved hand as Sol staggered to his feet. The child looked terrified. Sol, painfully thin and apparently more humiliated than frightened, seemed to be concentrating on the physical act of walking.

  Keeping a fair distance behind them, Miriam followed. Once in a while, a face appeared at a window, pulling aside a lace curtain to stare out. On every corner, Nazi flags snapped in the breeze. The snow had stopped and, as the procession passed the first corner of the Tiergarten, the sun filtered through the clouds. Passers-by standing among dried and dead shrubs stopped to stare.