by John Smolens
19.
Jack drove north and east, Braun sitting between Giannopoulos and me in the back seat. In daylight, with her makeup fixed, Braun was even younger than I had originally thought—early twenties at the most.
“Your mother,” I said, “she was in her teens when she married Vogel.”
“She wasn’t sixteen.”
We didn’t speak after that until we took Moross into Grosse Pointe, when Giannopoulos said, “Elena married well this time around.”
“My mother likes to say, ‘It’s not Bavaria.’”
“Mr. Collins, what’s he do?” I asked.
“Cars,” she said. “Larry designs them. Wait till you see next year’s Chrysler. Says they’re going to come out with these big tail fins.”
“Fins?” Giannopoulos shook his head. “What is happening to this country?”
Braun directed us through a neighborhood full of mansions set back on well-maintained lawns, until we turned into a long pea-stone drive that took us to a large house in mock-Tudor style that overlooked Lake St. Claire. She had called ahead from the restaurant and spoken to her mother briefly in German. I understood enough to realize that things between them weren’t exactly warm.
An English butler greeted us at the front door. He led us through a series of large rooms, where several maids polished and dusted antique furniture, and finally we were shown through a humid atrium full of enormous plants and squawking exotic birds to a glassed-in studio overlooking the beach. Wearing a paint-splattered smock, Elena Collins stood before a large canvas with a brush in one hand, a palette in the other. She looked as though she received regular facials, maintaining high cheekbones and flawless skin beneath the slightest protective sheen. Her silky blond hair draped both sides of her face, reminding me of a Saluki. She stood before a painting that could only be described as abstract: swirls and eddies of thick black and gray oil, layered on like cake frosting, broken by an occasional streak or splotch of crimson.
As Braun introduced us, her mother continued to stab the canvas with her brush. “What do you think, gentlemen?” Her German accent was still very much in evidence. “Wouldn’t this cheer up your living room? I’m trying to think of a title. Something like Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, perhaps?”
Braun wandered back into the atrium, keeping out of her mother’s range. She coaxed a parrot to drop down out of the giant fronds and perch on her forearm.
“You’ve heard about Father Lou?” Giannopoulos asked.
“I saw the papers this morning.”
“Hans Krantz was abducted from the Black Forest an hour ago,” Giannopoulos said.
Elena Collins didn’t look away from her painting. “Vogel will kill him. Slowly. Symbolically. Nothing abstract, I’m afraid.”
“Vogel is carrying out sentences on both men,” I said. “What were their crimes?”
“Disloyalty,” she said. “Disloyalty to the Reich is absolutely unforgivable. You would have to know Vogel to understand how much this means to them.”
Giannopoulos said, nodding toward me, “He did.”
Elena Collins put her palette and brush down on a small table cluttered with paint tubes, and then she turned to me. “How?”
“We were in a POW camp together in the U.P.”
“Vogel ran the place, no doubt,” she said. “But you survived them, Mr. Green.”
“I escaped.”
“I thought I had, too—long ago, before the war even began, when things were still being set in motion. The Reich was growing stronger all the time, and it consumed my first husband. I was lucky, I thought, to escape. He let me go—he had his women anyway. But when I got pregnant by Mile—you know we all grew up together—it was too much for Vogel. Particularly after what Mile did later.”
She went to a door and led us outside. Giannopoulos and I followed her down a set of wooden steps to the beach. She walked between us, her arms folded. “Mile did his job. He didn’t find it particularly tasteful—that would be his word—but he did as he was told, at first. His father was Romanian, and when the German army went into Romania, Mile was sent in to oversee interrogations because he understood the dialects so well. It was Klaus Stemple who got him the position, him and Hans Krantz—we were all in Romania at first.”
“With the Iron Guard,” Giannopoulos said.
“It would all be swift and clean—we truly believed that at first. It was like an operation: a brief period of pain, followed by extended recovery, but the end result would be strength. The New Order would save Germany, and we would create a new Europe—a new world. The Jews were treacherous. They controlled so much capital. We were convinced we had to do something extreme—it was a matter of our own survival.”
“Stemple, Krantz, and Mile Ionescu,” Giannopoulos said, “their jobs were to find Jews and—”
“Relocate them,” she said vehemently. “Now everyone sees these films and they think that the concentration camps were there from the beginning. They believe that we all knew about it—that we were all present every time they turned on the gas. No one wants to believe that some of us were appalled, too. There is no doubt that through their work they sent many people to their deaths. But when they realized what was happening, the extent of it, they changed. By the end of the war, Mile had saved hundreds, maybe thousands of Jews. Stemple and Krantz, too. They helped find them hiding places. They arranged for them to be transported. In some instances they drove trucks out of Romania—they had the authority. Several times they personally took people to Trieste. There was a great business in passports and other documents. They would board a ship and sail down the Adriatic. Many went to Istanbul. Odd, isn’t it, Jews seeking shelter in a Muslim country?”
“They delivered people to Trieste?” I asked.
“Jews. Serbs. Gypsies. I tell you people are alive today because of these men.” Elena Collins paused, and we all stared out at the flat plane of blue water. On the horizon there was one long, rust-streaked ship, an ore boat, heading north. “After Vogel was sent to Africa, we learned that he had been captured. When the war ended, there was this massive search by the Allies. We were interrogated, much as we had done ourselves. Everyone was a war criminal. We got out of Europe any way we could. By then Mile and I had separated—the war, the pressure, it was too great. He disappeared, and I thought he had been killed or imprisoned by the Allies. I managed to get to the States with my daughter. A year or so later, I hear from this priest: Mile has become Father Louis Brosnic. I tell him it’s too late to reconcile. He understood—I had met a GI who was going to be an engineer in the auto industry, and for our daughter it would be better that way. But there was always the bitterness. I could live with it, but I don’t like what it has done to Braun. She is so . . . I raise her up here, and as soon as she can, she moves into the city and goes to work in that restaurant where she will be near Mile and the others. I guess I can understand her wanting to be close to her father, but it is so much safer up here. The suburbs, they are a great American invention, no? No history, no past, nothing that can hurt you. Comfort that can strangle the life out of you.”
“And you,” I said. “You remember.”
“Yes, Mr. Green, I can’t forget. There’s a difference, isn’t there, between remembering and not being able to forget.”
I nodded. “Then Vogel found out that you were all here in the States.”
“Mile called me,” she said. “It was perhaps seven, eight years ago—one of the few times we have spoken directly to each other since we split up. Somehow he had heard about Vogel—that he was in South America. The Reich was still alive, waiting to reemerge. They still maintained their judicial system, if you can call it that. There were crimes against the Party, and it is Vogel’s job to see to it that punishment will be carried out. It is imperative that he pursue his former friends, even his ex-wife. To do so is to maintain the purity of it all. Of the dream. It’s what motivated so many of them, this dream, and when the war was over, they could only survive defeat by cling
ing to the dream. They still believe, and none of us can be exempt. I knew it would only be a matter of time.” Looking back toward her house, she said, “So in truth, even in this suburban fortress there is no real safety. But my daughter—I wish for her to be safe.”
“I might be able to help,” I said. “I know a place that’s safer.”
“You have done this before. People you can trust.”
“Yes,” I said. “People I can trust.”
“Trust. That is more valuable than money. You must be a most fortunate man.” Elena Collins turned to me. “This is a great country, is it not, Mr. Green?”
“It is,” I said.
“We come here, we change our habits, our dress, our accents—some of us, anyway. We change our names, do we not, Mr. Green? And for this, perhaps we even prosper.”
“Some more than others,” I said.
“But still, the money does not conceal you, and it becomes necessary to hide.”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “You could both leave.”
“No, Mr. Green,” she said. “But thank you for your kind offer. I will keep Braun with me for now, while we make arrangements for her father’s funeral.”
“And I’ll make some arrangements for her,” I said, “and let you know.”
“This I appreciate. Very much.” Elena Collins put her hand on my sleeve—a courtly gesture, it seemed—and arm in arm we led Giannopoulos back toward the house overlooking Lake St. Claire.
“One minute I feel like throwing up,” Claire said through the static on the phone. “And then suddenly I’ll get the chills, and five minutes later I’m breaking out in a sweat.”
“But you’re all right?” I said loudly. I was standing in the bedroom, looking down through the white sheer curtains at the sidewalk. Occasionally someone would pass beneath the streetlamp, but there was no sign that the apartment was being watched. “I mean the other times you ended up feeling really bad—you could sense that things weren’t right. Remember?”
“I know, but so far it’s fine.” She added something that I couldn’t understand.
“What?” I nearly shouted.
“At night I have these dreams of you and me—pretty hot stuff.” She laughed, which made me realize how far away she really was, up there in Sault Ste. Marie. “We’re usually in that little cabin, or sometimes the bunkhouse, and the rain is always pounding on the roof. Can’t you come up here?” Claire was not one to plead, but now she was coming pretty close. “Or I could return to Detroit.”
“Stay there. Please. We’ll be together soon.”
“You know it snowed here last night? There’s often no real spring in the U.P. It’s winter, and then—all of a sudden—one day the bugs are driving you mad.” Her voice had become falsely pleasant.
I sat on the bed. “You’re not alone now.”
“That’s right!”
“The Zampas are treating you all right?”
“Oh, just fine.” Then she laughed. “But if I don’t see you soon, I’m going to run off with this guy who works down at the locks. All day he catches the lines thrown from the ore boats and ties them around these big cleats.”
“Well, maybe you can have hot dreams about him tonight.”
“I’ll try.” There was a long pause and I began to think we had been cut off. “I only pray for your return to me soon,” she said.
I listened to the static in the phone line from Sault Ste. Marie. “It won’t be long.”
“What?”
Louder, I said, “I’ll call again soon.”
I must have fallen asleep, because I was suddenly awakened by the phone ringing. It was after one in the morning. I picked up the receiver, and before I could say anything, a voice said, “Mr. Green?”
It was Stemple, his voice deliberate and careful. “Yes?”
“I have spent the day helping with the arrangements for Father Lou’s funeral tomorrow morning.” He sounded fairly drunk, and I could hear ice clicking as he took another sip of his drink. “And then tonight I received a phone call from Vogel. He says he intends to ‘bring all of us to justice’—that is what he called it. You, me, Elena—her daughter, even.”
“Braun? What offense has she committed against the Nazis?”
“Eliminating entire families has always been part of their solution.”
“Why would Vogel contact you? Why not just kill you?”
“Good question. This is also part of their ‘justice.’ We must understand that it is not simply murder—that it is in fact a sentence to be carried out. It creates this powerful psychological effect.”
“It’s called fear.”
“Precisely. And there’s more,” Stemple said. “Krantz—he is still alive. Hans is being skinned alive. Very slowly. It is imperative—that was Vogel’s word—that Hans have time to contemplate his atonement.” I could hear Stemple pick up his glass; he took a drink and put it back on the table. “Vogel mentioned St. Florian. You know who this is?”
“He was a Roman military officer who became a Christian. He carried out the violent persecution of many Christians for the Emperor Diocletian. But eventually Florian adopted Christian beliefs—secretly—and this meant he could no longer carry out his orders. So the Romans—his own soldiers—tortured him and tried to get him to recant, but he refused. So they skinned him alive, burned him, and then a millstone was tied around his neck and he was thrown in the River Enns.”
“You Italians, with all your saints.”
“Each one has a story, Herr Stemple. There is another saint, St. Bartholomew. I saw his statue in the cathedral in Milan when I was a boy. The statue, he stands erect, boldly so, with his skin draped over one shoulder, like a cloak. I remember there was a small crowd standing before it. Some people prayed, of course, but there were two priests standing behind me. They were whispering, talking about how the statue was a remarkable study of the human anatomy. For weeks after, I had nightmares.”
“For Catholics, you’re supposed to offer your pain and suffering to Jesus—correct?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But this does not make it all right for Krantz. He will never be canonized a saint.”
“No.”
I could hear his labored breathing. Finally, he asked, “What did you do during the war?”
“I was an Italian officer. After being captured I was in a POW camp here in Michigan.”
“You never imagined this life for yourself.”
“This is true, Herr Stemple.”
“For all of us. At first, during the war, I thought I was fighting, too. We all did. But then we began to realize that we were only doing terrible things to people. War was no excuse. And when we understood this and tried to help these people, it made us fugitives. All these years I have been waiting for someone like Vogel. Of course he is blind—he has always been blind. At least we became able to see. Sometimes I wish that weren’t so. It would have been easier, really. Vogel—he still believes, he still has that, and in a strange way I am envious of his blindness. Brosnic, Krantz, and I, we talked about this often, the fact that it is now so hard to believe in anything. Democracy, capitalism, communism, God—it doesn’t matter what it is, Mr. Green, just so you believe in something. It gives you strength and conviction. It makes you righteous. For Vogel, believing in the Führer is the same as believing in Jesus.”
20.
Rain pounded the slate roof of St. Stanislaus’s Church, which smelled of damp wool and incense, a very Catholic combination. The church was filled beyond capacity, so I stood in the back of the balcony. Through the distortions of a stained-glass window directly behind me, I could see hundreds of people huddled beneath umbrellas on the sidewalks and in the park across the street. Had they known the truth about Father Lou Brosnic, that he was not an ordained priest, that his daughter and ex-wife sat next to his coffin, and that he had at one point in his life, when he was Mile Ionescu, labored for the Nazi regime, they probably would have stood in the rain nevertheless. Why
? Because before the offertory of the Mass, several parishioners climbed the pulpit and told of Father Lou’s devotion to St. Stanislaus’s Parish. They recalled numerous acts of generosity and kindness. For his parishioners, these acts would be sufficient penance for whatever sins he might have committed.
Stemple was right: the Führer was Jesus to the Nazis, but the difference is that Christians, true Christians, believe in forgiveness. Nazis don’t. They believe in strength through retribution. They cannot tolerate weakness, let alone failure, and are incapable of forgiveness. This, they believe, is their greatest virtue. It’s what makes them so horrifying. Somewhere in the city of Detroit a man was being skinned alive, slowly. I remembered the statue of St. Bartholomew in the cathedral in Milan, how it frightened me as a boy. But it’s different, thinking of St. Florian and St. Bartholomew. They were flayed alive centuries ago. Their pain has become legendary and has lost its real human element. They were martyrs, and then they became saints. It’s not the same for a man named Hans Krantz, who was being skinned alive in Detroit in 1956. They must have taken him to a remote place, a warehouse or an abandoned building, his mouth gagged so that as the blade of the knife peeled away his skin, his screams could not be heard. I thought of the moment when I’d sliced my finger, which happened often when I’d worked in the kitchen at Tony’s Grill. Just a little slip of the knife opening the skin is a terrible sensation, the sharp steel separating the flesh so cleanly, so easily. What was happening to Krantz was unimaginable. Maybe his body would go into shock. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would die of a heart attack.
At the end of Mass, I managed to inch forward until I found a place at the balcony railing. I could see Braun and her mother, standing in the front pew, both wearing black veils. The people who filled the central aisle parted as the pall bearers carried the coffin out of the church. There was only the sound of the rain, shuffling feet, and the occasional cough. In the years since the end of the war, Claire and I had attended Mass regularly. One Sunday, as we walked home, she told me, You don’t pray anymore. There was no reprimand in her voice, only curiosity. I said, Since becoming Frank Green, it seems I have forgotten how. She held my arm, as she often did when we walked together, and her fingers tightened around the sleeve of my coat as she said, You will remember, one day. And we didn’t speak of it again.