Child of the Journey

by Berliner, Janet

  "Go! Erich commanded. "All the way across the drive. You can!"

  The sled slid more easily as Aquarius' powerful shoulders hunched into the trial.

  "Yes!" Erich cheered.

  Aquarius reached the far side of the drive and entered the grass, digging up divots, belly almost touching the ground. Behind him, the sled touched the lawn.

  "Enough," Erich said. He patted the dog while the others looked on jealously, wanting his affection.

  "Now you," he said aloud to Taurus, though even before he spoke she was moving in an excited circle. He pointed to the traces. She ambled over, the hitch in her hips almost imperceptible. "Good girl," he said. Her tail wagged in answer, and her happiness and determination beat against his mind like a frothy surf.

  He unhitched Aquarius, still catching his breath, his chest heaving. Taurus waited patiently, almost seeming to distance herself from the insult of any form of leash, while Erich hooked her up. Aquarius shook himself and trotted back to take his post in the circle.

  Erich knelt and held Taurus' head in his hands. Touching her that way gave him an odd sense of déjà vu: lifting Miriam's chin and kissing her at the wedding. The wedding was simple: Konnie, the trainers, a few Nazi functionaries as a matter of form. Hitler had been unable to attend but sent his good wishes. No family members or friends. She had none left who were not Jewish, and they in Switzerland; as far as he was concerned, he had none--period.

  Now that Sol was gone.

  Had I known about his perversion, he would have been dead to me long before the goddamn jar arrived.

  He gave Taurus a final pat, and stepped back. A breeze had come up, and for a moment the scent of roses and freshly mown lawns from the surrounding gardens assailed him. It felt good to be alive. He put the horror of the jar behind him.

  "I love you," he told his dog.

  As if sublimating her happiness into determination, rather than wag her tail she leaned into the task of pulling the pyramid back across the drive. Unlike Aquarius' surges to jump-start the weight, she strained forward without moving, her shoulders level with her hips, the forelegs taking the bulk of the load. It was, Erich knew, poor form, especially given the size of what she was expected to carry, but she seemed loathe to engage in tricks which, while effective, would render her less than regal.

  Her entire body took on the look of a freeze-frame: jowl set, eyes bulging, shoulder muscles bunched beneath the skin. He could feel the dysplasia raging as he opened his mind to her misery, hoping the combined psyches would will her onward.

  Pain sliced from one of his hips to the other with such force that it sent him staggering. His mind reeled with agony. It shot up his spine and clutched the base of his skull. Breath issued loudly through his lips. He tried to cry out her name but only gasped as the pain triggered a series of lightening seizures, shaking his body like minor aftershocks of an earthquake.

  In the split-seconds between its beginning and its end, there came an intense awareness of greenery around him. He was no longer at the estate that once had belonged to Miriam Rathenau and now was the property of the Nazi Party, as she herself was--officially. He was amid thigh-high grass beneath a white moon crimped into an otherwise ink-black sky like a notary punch. The night was hot, oppressive; oppressive, too, was the dark tangle that, surrounding him, seemed to press toward him as if to listen to another of his dialogues carried on in solitude. At the top of a gentle slope above him, a dozen dressed stones and totem sticks, all the height of a man, stood beneath the moon which backlit half a dozen dogs which walked upright, like men.

  As instantly as it had come, the image vanished. Once again Taurus was before him, pulling with all her might but unable to move the mountain. Aquarius joined her, followed by Pisces, Virgo, Sagittarius with her clipped tail, Libra. Then all of them. Before Erich could object, they clamped their mouths upon the traces and, tugging backward as Taurus continued to pull, brought the pyramid scraping along the drive.

  The satisfaction that flooded Erich washed the pain away, his and Taurus'. For the first time in months, he felt free of anxiety and dread, utterly at peace, without concerns or plans for what the dogs' teamwork would mean in the greater picture called Madagascar. This is the satisfaction, he decided, I would have known after lovemaking with Miriam, had not the Party turned her away from me. He assessed the loss without remorse or self-pity, no more emotionally involving than the clouds that were clouds.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  A sound invaded Erich's consciousness, unmistakable and too-familiar, coming from the direction of the west gate.

  Few sounds in the universe approximate that of a round being chambered. There is about it a certainty of its own importance, like the hiss of a highly venomous snake. Someone or something else holds the power of life and death, and the myth of immortality is briefly, however briefly, dispelled.

  Erich's attention leapt toward the sound. What he saw commanded his full attention: Heinrich Wilhelm Krayller, who had dreamed of being a circus clown but whom fate and Hitler had conspired to make a clown in the Nazi circus, stood with his Karbiner 90 beneath the chin of Sachsenhausen's Deputy Commandant, finger on the trigger, face rigid with wrath.

  Hempel's head was tilted back from the pressure of the muzzle. Though he clearly was attempting to maintain his military bearing, his eyes registered fear.

  On the other side of the men, two other soldiers also faced off: Krayller's affenpinscher stood before and below the larger wolfhound, neither dog moving, both tight with fury, tails set like sticks.

  "I'm going to kill you, you son of a bitch," Krayller said, his finger tightening on the trigger. Krayller, who would not harm so much as a fly unless the defense of his country or its women or children necessitated it, had murder in his eyes and held the power of God in his hands.

  For a moment.

  As suddenly, the power shifted. He dropped the carbine to the ground and clutched his throat, staggering backwards into the affenpinscher whose neck was being jostled between the wolfhound's jaws.

  The terrier kicked ineffectually as it lay on its side, fighting with no more sound than a wind wafting through the linden trees that lined the Grünewald's streets. Then its rump flopped twice upon the driveway and the little dog lay paralyzed, chest rising and falling, eyes staring...and the shepherds charged.

  Everything happened almost without sound, like a silent movie where only the tick, tick, tick of the turning metal wheel indicated that there was a mechanical helper that balanced the magic of film. Perhaps, Erich thought, the dogs sensed that there was no need for sound, that nothing but death would deter one like Sturmbannführer Otto Hempel who bent effortlessly and lifted up the corporal's weapon. Without looking at Erich he said, "If your dogs so much as rub against me I'll kill your friend here." He moved the carbine toward the terrier. "I'll kill them both."

  My friend? Erich reacted with surprise. Was that what he and the trainers had become. No. He would not countenance that, not after what had become of the only real friend he had ever known.

  Solomon Freund.

  He called off the dogs.

  They halted but refused to sit, as he commanded. Instead they moved nervously along an imaginary boundary drawn across the drive, anxious to finish what they had begun.

  Corporal Krayller picked himself up, blood seeping through his fingers which still rested against his neck. He looked up at Hempel with terror and, Erich realized incredulously, a certain measure of awe.

  "You sick bastard," Erich said to the Deputy Commandant.

  "That I am, Herr Oberst," Hempel replied, casually checking the button of his sleeve. "Not only emotionally but actually. Points of fact, I might add, of which I am intensely proud."

  Erich bent over Krayller and, despite the soldier's attempt to keep his hand over his throat, examined the wound.

  "Not deep," Erich concluded. "He didn't cut the jugular."

  "I am a surgeon in that regard," Hempel said. "Keep that in mind, Herr Obe
rst."

  Relegating his anger to the back of his mind, Erich lifted Krayller by the arm, the corporal cradling the affenpinscher. Krayller pointed toward Hempel, trying to tell Erich something, but the wound or perhaps his fear had momentarily taken away his ability to speak. Erich patted him on the shoulder and sent him trundling toward the first aid locker in the garage, the shepherds parting before him and the terrier, the guard of the hub of their team, with the respect one might accord royalty.

  "You don't belong here," Erich told Hempel. "Neither you nor Goebbels, with his starlets and whores. But especially not you."

  "I never liked this place anyway. I rejoiced when I was given Sachsenhausen. There, we know how to eradicate the stench of Jews." Hempel stooped to pat the wolfhound, who accepted the affection without returning it. "But where either of us live, or with whom we work or socialize, is not our decision to make. We are soldiers, are we not?"

  "Only you would call yourself that."

  "It seems, Herr Oberst, that others do not share your opinion, so it is best that you keep silent concerning your feelings about me." A slight, wry, almost seductive smile creased his lips. "As you already know, we will be working together, closely together, at least for the foreseeable future. Herr Reichsführer Himmler himself has placed me in charge of security on the Madagascar expedition. What you may not yet know is that my Boris," again he patted the wolfhound, "will be replacing that insult the bleeding corporal over there calls a dog."

  The wolfhound, at the hub of the shepherds, Erich thought. My God. My God. It took every effort of his being not to protest. Hempel was awaiting that protest, would revel in it. And it would be futile. For an instant, he saw the jungle of Madagascar with startling clarity. In the distance, a dog howled. The moon, pale and heartless, felt like a cold hand upon his bare shoulder.

  "Do you hate me because my friends are Jews?" Erich asked abruptly, unable to contain himself. "Or because I stayed away from you when I was in the Freikorps Youth."

  "You would have enjoyed my...company."

  "Did the other boys?" Erich asked angrily.

  "Those who did not at first--learned to."

  "You are...despicable."

  "And you, Herr Oberst, are too close to our Führer."

  Then Erich understood. The realization startled him, made his mouth dry. What had brought him such despair, such hatred of himself and of Hitler--the Führer's order to shoot Achilles--had caused others to assume a closeness they found threatening.

  "We will never allow your dog into the Zodiac," he said.

  The captain was stroking the wolfhound's head. In the two years Hempel had lived at the estate, Erich had never seen him show affection toward any animal. The transparent turnabout sickened him.

  "I don't know whose boots you licked, but you can unlick them," Erich continued. "You have no place in my corps."

  "Reichsführer Himmler might think otherwise," Hempel said.

  "The Reichsführer might like to know about your little episodes with Goebbels' whores," Erich said. "You think Toy didn't tell me how you ordered her not to wash after Goebbels humped her? Out of his bed, down to your room...." He stuck his hands in his pockets and started away. "As you can tell, Herr Sturmbannführer," he said over his shoulder, "Toy gave me more than a smoking jacket before you relegated her to the docks."

  He was past the garage before Hempel's voice, surprisingly articulate, buffeted him. "And I have the transfusion papers, Herr Oberst. They have sat on my desk for a year," he said. "Strange how I keep forgetting to send them to Medizinalrat Schmidt so your dear wife can be scheduled."

  Erich continued walking, afraid that if he stopped and turned around his horror would be visible. All the favors he had called in to stop the transfusions...all for naught. Fool that he was, he had thought his own best efforts had halted the insanity."

  "I will leave Boris chained here at the gate," Hempel called out after him. "Treat her well."

  Erich walked around to the dog-runs behind the mansion. The shepherds followed him, moving with a heaviness that told him that his mood of despair had transferred itself to them.

  "Herr Oberst?" a sad voice called out to him from the bushes.

  Krayller stepped into his line of sight. There was bloodied gauze wrapped around his throat and he held Grog in his arms. "It will happen, won't it?" he said without preamble.

  "I'm afraid so. We will find you...another place."

  "I have no other place," the corporal said. "We both know that. It's back to the Wehrmacht for me...unless Hempel sees fit to have me court-martialed and shot." He appeared on the verge of tears as, with a hamhock-sized hand, he stroked the terrier's head. The affenpinscher tried to lick his wrist. "What stupidity, pointing my carbine at an officer!"

  "You should have shot him," Erich said.

  The corporal's gaze leapt up--surprised and hopeful.

  "I would have helped you dispose of the body."

  Krayller looked toward the west end of the estate. "But not now," he said. "It's too late."

  Erich nodded. Yes, it was too late, he thought. Hempel would waste no time making arrangements for the implementation of the papers, should he not return to Sachsenhausen.

  The corporal pulled up his massive chest and slowly released a breath. His shoulders sagged. Sorrow seemed to pervade his very being. His eyes were moist. "I can't leave Grog," he said. "And I won't fight in the trenches. Not for Hitler. Certainly not for the likes of Hempel." He eyed Erich's holstered pistol. "You might as well shoot me now."

  "Such talk is foolishness, if not insanity," Erich said. "You can have my motorcycle," he told the corporal.

  Krayller narrowed his eyes, not comprehending.

  "It's yours," Erich said, "if you will do what I should do. Take your dog and my cycle," he reached to pet the affenpinscher, who appeared to enjoy the attention and was, amazingly, none the worse for wear after the incident with the wolfhound, "and ride to Switzerland. Don't even think about looking back."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Misha and Sol were looking out of the window when the staff car pulled up to the end of the road. Pleshdimer, who was driving, stayed behind the wheel while the Sturmbannführer walked to the farmhouse.

  "Bruqah said I would be safe here," Misha said.

  "And so you have been," Solomon said. "But not even he could guarantee that it would last forever. Besides, you don't know that he has come for you."

  "Yes, I do," Misha said, looking around desperately as if for a hiding place. "The alcove," he said. "The one Bruqah uses. It must lead to the outside. I could run away."

  "We are due to leave the farmhouse within twenty-four hours. Why risk being shot by one of the guards? That would not be wise."

  As if staying here and waiting for him is wise, Misha thought, but he stayed where he was.

  The hours that followed were, at best, a blur. He was instructed to pack what clothing he had been given since his arrival at the farmhouse in a small sea-bag. Then he was escorted by the Sturmbannführer to the car. Pleshdimer was asleep and snoring in the back seat, a bottle of alcohol loosely in his hand.

  Hempel placed Misha in the passenger seat and took the wheel. Misha was within easy reach of the man's groping fingers. In desperation, he thought about the list, going over and over it in his mind as the fingers pushed and pulled--

  The next thing he actively remembered was spreading his legs as he lay on a bunk bed in a small cabin on board a ship. Hempel had apparently told Pleshdimer to wait outside.

  The Sturmbannführer leaned against the wall and waited. Knowing what he had to do, Misha took off his clothing, folded everything, and piled them neatly on a small dresser that was built into the corner of the cabin. Then he lay down on the bunk.

  Hempel drew two pairs of nylons from his pocket. He wrapped them around Misha's wrists and ankles and tied each one tightly to one of the metal posts that anchored the top bunk to his. At once Misha's hands and feet began to swell.

  "A
half hitch followed by a clove hitch," Hempel said, standing back to admire his handiwork. Having done that, he did The thing to Misha.

  "I have a present for you," Hempel said, when, for the moment, he'd had his fill of pleasure.

  Misha stared up at his own reflection, distorted in the sea-green metal of the upper bunk, and tried to obey Bruqah's instructions. "Think of yourself as a dolphin," the Malagasy had said. "Let his words and his acts wash over you like sea water." It had seemed like a wonderful idea at the time, but it didn't work now.

  Not that Misha was surprised.

  How could anyone be a dolphin if, as Bruqah claimed, they stood on their tails and chittered, and played tag around ships, and led lost sailors to safety through dangerous waters and sharks and everything. Besides, he didn't have a tail or fins, nor could he hold his breath for very long at all.

  But he wished he could.

  He wished he could hold his breath until he died.

  "Get dressed," Hempel ordered, untying Misha's bonds.

  Misha did as he was told. When he was fully dressed, Hempel held a package out to him. The boy looked down at the blue wrapping paper and the bow that littered the package like a tangle of curls.

  "You must earn it, of course," Hempel said, pulling the package away. He was already breathing heavily again.

  Misha lay back down. His gaze returned to the top bunk. Mechanically, he began to unbutton his trousers. "Skip that part," Hempel ordered, putting a restraining hand over the boy's.

  Misha shut his eyes.

  "Don't close your eyes," Hempel said. "I would hate to have to order him," he nodded his head toward the closed door, "to slit your eyelids so that you will be forced to watch." He unsnapped his stiletto from the wrist attachment within his sleeve. "Have you ever seen someone with his eyelids cut off, Misha darling? Have you ever seen eyelids fried in a pan? They jump around like squid. It's quite fascinating to watch."

  Misha said nothing, not even when, using the stiletto, Hempel flicked the buttons from Misha's shirt. He lowered his face and licked each nipple before cutting the shirt the rest of the way off and starting on Misha's trousers.