Child of the Journey

by Berliner, Janet

  Now he rose from his chair, glass lifted. "Power for the Fatherland! We must be rid of the flab that cost us the Great War."

  "The flab and the Jews!" Bormann shouted as everyone rose.

  "They are one and the same!" Hitler said. "The Jews are a people of excess, whose ideal is to gorge their bellies and wallets at the expense of good Germans." He tapped his glass of mineral water. "This represents what I seek for Germany. Purity!"

  "Prosit!"

  The doubt and horror that had lingered with him since his visit to Oranienburg settled on Erich's shoulders. Hitler demanded absolute commitment. Absolute purity. If he and his cronies decided the baby was, after all, half-Jewish...the order to kill Achilles might be repeated--with a child. His child.

  Erich refilled his glass, keeping his hand steady. The Führer was the essence of the nation; he could have Erich assigned to guard Sachsenhausen convoys. After what he saw in Oranienburg, all else--even losing his dogs--would be a benediction in comparison. He had to believe the worst of what he'd heard about the camp, that it was a pesthole of disease, a place where human suffering was considered necessary for the larger scheme of the Reich.

  The larger scheme! That was why he loved his dogs so much. They lacked understanding of man-made complexities--understood only generalized goodness and suffering.

  Whatever his double promotion entailed, he vowed, fiddling with his linen serviette, he would refuse to be involved with hurting the Jews. He would not do anything that resembled his father's treachery toward Jacob Freund. Perhaps the past was not sacred; perhaps, as Hitler claimed, only the present counted. Nevertheless, he was not going to repeat his and his father's mistakes.

  The small-talk became less reserved than before dinner, but he spoke only when spoken to. When Leni arrived to film the official events, he felt relieved that the evening was almost over.

  Hitler clinked a knife against a glass. "Our army, the one the imperialist powers did not allow," he waited for the muffled laughter to cease, "continues to strengthen into the world's finest peace-keeping force. I have personally encouraged many promotions due to excellence. Some of those who have been promoted were invited tonight to sup at the table they serve." He paused again for polite applause. "Would those being honored step forward."

  The promotees formed a line, Erich among them. He felt as impatient and self-conscious as a boy awaiting Eucharist during Mass. When his turn came, Hitler shook his hand, took hold of his shoulders, and turned him toward the audience.

  "The imperialists," Hitler said, "are afraid of shadows and of Germany's clear vision. They fear we wish to renew hostilities with France over Alsace-Lorraine, as if we would shed a single drop of German blood to gain control of the Alsatians who have switched sides so often they no longer know where their loyalties lie!"

  Laughter followed. Glasses were lifted. "The only Alsatians the Fatherland wants are the shepherds raised by this young genius with canines. His army of dogs lives up to the heart and wisdom of our highest Aryan aspirations. For that, and for future services--the details of which not even he, as yet, knows--Alois has been accorded the rare honor of a double promotion, to full colonel."

  The Führer applauded as the assembly rose to its feet. Swept up by the Hitler's impassioned speaking, Erich felt excited. Yes! He could have it all! Miriam, his dogs, the glory that was due him!

  As the applause died, however, a shroud fell into place. His doubts about the Party had been eroded too easily by the Führer's speech. His weakness embarrassed him.

  After dinner, while officers formed amiable groups or stepped into the garden for a smoke, Erich sat where he was, watching Hitler with Bormann, Hess, and Eichmann. Bormann was speaking earnestly, as if to counter the rumor that he took just a little too much pleasure in "arranging" the Führer's finances.

  Perón joined them for a moment, then walked over toward Erich as Hitler and the other notables filed through a side door.

  "The Führer wishes you to remain after the others leave," Perón said. "There's to be a meeting. You, Eichmann, Hempel, Riefenstahl." He ticked them off on his fingers.

  "What is it all about, Juan--if I may call you Juan?"

  Perón smiled. "You may call me anything you like." He left as abruptly as he had approached.

  Trying not to dwell on the possibilities, Erich watched the diners disperse. Some congratulated him, offering platitudes about how a man's worth eventually surfaced and was recognized. Ultimately he found himself alone except for the steward's helpers clearing the tables. He ordered coffee from a waiter he knew to be a member of the SS and, forced to wait, allowed himself to dream.

  Since his rank now equaled Perón's, the South American had to be part of Hitler's plan for Colonel Erich Weisser Alois. That could only mean one thing: Erich and his canine corps would help lead the Fascist revolution in South America. That would explain the double promotion. Any rank below Perón's would diminish the Germanic presence; any above would hint of imperialism, like Bismarck's error when, during the Great War, his envoys had tried to persuade Mexico to attack the United States.

  Alois and Perón.

  Everything fit, as if his life were part of a grand design shaped for this moment; his role in military intelligence, his guerilla training under Otto Braun, his knowledge of Catholicism...all were essential for a German-Argentinean thrust through South America. He tried to recall which cities were where, and what strategy the South American generals, San Martín and Bolívar, had used. If only he'd studied harder at the Gymnasium! Too late to worry about that. He would act informed and responsive toward Hitler's and Perón's proposals tonight, then plunder the university's library in the morning and seek out the best Spanish tutor in Berlin. With the right incentive, he could learn--and face--anything.

  Like the matter of Miriam.

  Ironically, everywhere except in Germany she was a Jew. How would the South Americans react to her?

  Cross that bridge later, he thought, imagining a Fascist conflagration with Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Degrelle in Europe; Hirohito in Japan; Chiang Kai-shek with his Blueshirts in China; the German-American Bund Party in the United States; the recently disenfranchised Integralistas in Brazil. And the Argentineans.

  Together they would burn the world clean of the Communist threat and the decadence of democracy. Leading the troops, he would be the swordtip of a revolution, its fiery wedge!

  The stewards exited, and he allowed himself a congratulatory smile.

  "You look pleased with yourself, Herr Oberst," Colonel Perón said, re-entering. "The Führer will be ready to see you," Perón glanced at his watch, "in fifteen minutes. The meeting will be brief. He is most weary."

  "Be so kind as to give me an indication of the subject of this meeting," Erich said, forcing himself to keep his smile.

  Clasping his hands behind his back, Perón looked thoughtful. "At my instigation, the Führer has arranged to give you and your dogs an opportunity to prove your worth. I am told you consider them the equal of any good German soldier."

  Erich's smile broadened. "How is it we are to prove ourselves?"

  "As part of a two-part operation." Perón sat down and lit a cigarette. "In brief, I wish to view a particular naval operation in the South Atlantic. You are to accompany me."

  "And that operation is?"

  "A military secret, even from you, Herr Oberst. Outside of the highest officials, only the captain of the Altmark, whom you shall meet in due time, knows those details. I can tell you that I will be with you as far as Lüderitz, a port on the west coast of Africa."

  "I see," Erich said, but he felt a mounting confusion. He struggled to maintain his professional reserve.

  "I told you that this is to be a two-part operation," Perón said. "The first, the one I am to view, is top secret."

  "And the second?"

  "You and your men and dogs, together with a contingent of SS and free laborers, will proceed to Madagascar. Yours will be the advance party for troops that wi
ll secure the island for the Reich."

  Madagascar! Erich thought. A stroke of genius! The Italians had invaded and defeated Ethiopia, and now Germany would have Madagascar. With the Italian hot-heads in control of the southern entrance to the Red Sea, Hitler had to make a similar move. Whoever held the island controlled the Indian Ocean. That meant control of oil.

  The top secret operation Perón was to observe, Erich figured, must be an invasion, to help galvanize Perón's belief in the German cause by demonstrating how, with Germany's help, he could acquire not just his country but his continent!

  "What is the timetable for the primary invasion?" Erich asked.

  "If the invasion comes, it will come in good time."

  "If?" Erich's excitement halted. "There are no immediate plans?"

  Perón shook his head.

  "Then why am I being sent to Madagascar?"

  "As you're no doubt aware, Poland has become increasingly aggressive. Should the Poles be foolish enough to spill German blood, your Führer intends, as he says, to crush them like roaches. He knows, however, that the problems he will have to contend with after peace is restored will be staggering. Over three million Jews in Poland alone!" Perón paused, as if to allow the information to take hold. "The Führer is convinced that a foothold in Madagascar will give him a solution to the Jewish question. He wishes to transport all Jews there to form a country of their own."

  "I'm being sent to some remote African island where I am to wait out the war with the remote possibility that perhaps Germany will use the objective?" Erich felt his temper rising.

  "Calm down, Herr Oberst." Perón's eyes flashed a warning. "Let me attempt to explain. As you know, your Führer is determined that he must rid himself of the Jews. You may not, however, be aware that your government has been trying to work with the Zionists to arrange for secret convoys to Palestine. Those talks have broken down. The British have cancelled all immigration approvals to Palestine and pressured Greece and Turkey not to accept Jews. They have sealed off the coast of Palestine with a flotilla of destroyers and intensive air reconnaissance. An alternative must be found."

  The words peppered Erich's mind like shotgun pellets. Absurd!

  "Hauptmann Eichmann favors resettling the Jews in a farming area near the Polish town of Nisko," Perón went on, "but Madagascar is not out of the question. If not Poland, then the island. The Poles apparently think the same thing, because two years ago they sent researchers there to see if Jews could be relocated in the island's Ankaizina region."

  A nightmare. It could not be happening. Not to him.

  "The idea's not new," Perón said. "Napoleon had such a plan, and Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister, recently made a similar suggestion. Here, Eichmann is the one who thought the thing through-- in concert, naturally, with your Führer."

  "Will we make war on Madagascar?" Erich asked wearily.

  Goebbels joined them. "The Führer hopes to persuade France to cede us the island. After the indigenous population has been moved to the mainland, the Sicherheitspolizei will orchestrate the Jewish resettlement in non-German ships."

  "Another camp," Erich muttered.

  "A homeland," Perón said.

  Erich looked up, amazed at the conviction in Perón's voice.

  "You will have six months to get this program on its feet," Perón said. "Do that, and the Führer will scrap plans for resettlement in Poland and institute resettlement to Madagascar. You will insure that the Jews work. Once the colony is established, production and trade will be managed by German-run organizations. There will ultimately be purely German and purely Jewish businesses. The merchant bank plus the issue and transfer bank will be German. The trading bank and production organization will be Jewish."

  "I'm to stay in Madagascar, while Germany glorifies herself in Europe," Erich said in disbelief.

  "The Führer will let Miriam accompany you, assuming you both approve. Leni Riefenstahl--I believe you know her--will film all this for the Reich. She would like to include a sense of domesticity. I believe she is also planning to do a documentary on the Bushmen, and at least one other African film, so you will see a lot of her, as you will Otto Hempel."

  "Hempel! Going too?"

  Perón ignored the outburst. "The war with Poland, if it comes, is unlikely to last. France is too worried about Mussolini and Franco to risk a war with Germany. You will return here soon enough."

  "What if the war drags on?"

  "Then, Herr Oberst," Goebbels said, walking toward the door, "you wait--and enjoy the tropics."

  Erich stood up and shoved his chair hard against the table. "So you have found a way to rid yourself of me and my dogs."

  Goebbels did not turn around.

  Breathing hard, Erich looked at Perón.

  "This has nothing to do with Goebbels," Perón said, his smile not wavering, "though it is true that you do not exactly inspire his love. I myself have heard him say that your dogs stink like Jews."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Looking into Miriam's bedroom and watching her sleep, Erich decided he would never understand the female psyche. The last thing he had expected from her was enthusiasm about Madagascar. Anger, yes. Neutrality, perhaps. But open enthusiasm? Just when he had begun to accept Solomon as a permanent specter between them?

  In the two weeks since the Reichschancellery, she had been almost excited--sorting, packing, asking questions about what she should or should not take in the single steamer trunk allotted her. Maybe they would have a real marriage someday after all, he thought. One that included lovemaking. Not just sex. Certainly not rape. Perhaps one day she would let go of the pain of her thighs digging into the rim of a metal bathtub--

  He reached for the book Leni had sent him after the meeting at the Reichschancellery. The Memoirs of Mauritius Augustus, Count de Benyowsky. Her accompanying note explained that, after her current projects were finished, she wanted to do a feature-length about the Count. She and her crew would film Erich's trip as far as Lüderitz, divert to do her Bushman shoot, and rejoin him to continue filming the Jews after their base camp was in place. Then--the project dearest to her heart, the Benyowsky movie. The Count, she wrote, bore startling similarities to a good friend of hers, recently promoted to colonel.

  In the autobiography, Benyowsky liberally mixed fiction with fact, but the lies were so outrageously inventive that Erich found them amusing. He felt drawn to the Hungarian, an eighteenth-century aristocratic adventurer captured by the Russians during the Seven Years' War.

  Escaping from a Siberian penal camp, Benyowsky and his fellow exiles had stolen two ships and eventually ended up in northeastern Madagascar. There they had encountered malaria, native unrest brought on by the jealousy of European traders competing for economic rights to the huge island, and humidity that could wilt even the strongest of men. Undaunted, he had borrowed an idea from the Americans, and with supplies and moral support from Benjamin Franklin had founded a colony and written the island's first Constitution, guaranteeing equal rights for all. The result was peace between the tribes.

  As drums beat and nearly naked women danced beneath an African moon, thirty thousand warriors laid down their assegais-- spears--and prostrated themselves at his feet. In gratitude, they proclaimed Benyowsky Ampandzaka-bé, Chief of Chiefs.

  The memoirs had given Erich insights he could never have found in Goebbels' military documents. Madagascar began to fascinate him, especially after his five or six meetings with an island native named Bruqah, who was to be his guide and translator. The man was a fascinating dichotomy--knowledgeable, an excellent teacher, outwardly Westernized--yet in many ways that combination of mystic and pragmatist he had only seen before in Solomon.

  Maybe Madagascar would give him a way to design for himself a place in history and to spit in the Führer's eye. What if he created a homeland for the Jews, not founded on ghetto or camp conditions, but on equal rights? A true homeland. He, Erich Alois Nobody, recipient of an empty double promotion and false p
romises. That would earn him Miriam's forgiveness...and maybe even God's.

  Were it not for Otto Hempel going to Madagascar too--

  He forced himself away from thoughts of that pig and indulged instead in a fantasy of dancing women and beating drums and thousands of grateful warriors laying down their dogwood spears to prostrate themselves at his feet--all the while chanting Ampandzaka-bé.

  Like his flirtation with Leni, this too was a pleasant and harmless fabrication, he told himself, staring at Miriam, who turned awkwardly in her sleep.

  "Bruqah!" she cried out.

  He tried to remember when he had mentioned that name to her. Not that there had been any reason to avoid doing so; she would be meeting the Malagasy herself soon enough.

  Miriam was again breathing regularly, sleeping more easily. Their bedroom's French doors were open, and a lightly humid breeze carried with it the intermittent barking of the dogs reacting to the full moon. Tonight, he thought, the grand house encapsulated him. For once it was an extension of himself...its stone his cells, its heritage his heart, and not only Miriam ex-Rathenau's. Tonight he could believe that the events of that cabaret night when he had first seen her--the night he had met Rathenau, and Miriam had danced upon his boyish desire--had been no accident of fate, but rather destiny, preparing him to claim the important things that had been Rathenau's.

  He was finally master of this castle.

  Rising quietly, he slipped into his smoking jacket and went downstairs, intent on quieting the dogs. When he opened the front door, he discovered a messenger about to knock.

  "Heil Hitler!" The messenger clicked his heels together and saluted.

  Erich returned the greeting, though without enthusiasm. "Must you come in the middle of the night? Can nothing in this country wait until morning?"

  He glanced past the young man and, surprised to see a bicycle instead of a motorcycle in the driveway, realized this was not one of the usual messengers from headquarters. They were all beginning to look alike, these young Nazis, he told himself cynically. So blond and fervid.