The Hour of the Cat

by Peter Quinn

  Donovan knew the risks to his own reputation if Dunne turned out to be the rogue the feds suspected he was. But Donovan believed, above all else, that men like Dunne were owed something. Huddled in muddy trenches, rats gnawing on the dead, clouds of poison gas filling the air, high-percussion shells raining down, up and over the top straight into the withering hail of machine guns, the wonder was that more hadn’t gone mad. The military cemeteries in northern France and Flanders, planted thick with dead, were barely two decades old. Hospital wards still tended to the mental and physical cripples. Anderson was only one of a myriad still befuddled by what they had endured. For what? A troubled peace, a wrecked economy, forebodings of another war.

  He’d made it a point to stay in touch with as many of the men as he could. Some sought financial help, and he did what he could, particularly for those with families who’d been thrown out of work by the Depression. A few he never heard from again. Several contacted him only once, usually for some special assistance when they were in trouble with the law, phoning him at the office, or that one time when he’d been called at home, in the fall of 1919. He was just settling back into the routine of his life in Buffalo. The maid called him to the phone in an agitated state. The man on the other end insisted he’d served in the war under Colonel Donovan in France and needed to talk with him right away. He’d called back three times and wouldn’t be dissuaded.

  He’d taken the receiver reluctantly but, in an instant, placed the name: Dunne. Fintan Dunne. A sullen, wisecracking, skeptical recruit whose truculence in training became bravery on the battlefield, he’d been the one who’d come back into the trench after the others were blown to bits; risked the same fate pulling out his commanding officer before the next round landed and acted as a messenger the rest of the day, running from position to position, in constant danger of being shot. When it was over, he’d dismissed the idea of being recommended for a medal. “Only award I want,” he said, “is to get back to New York alive.” A boy who’d become a soldier. A soldier who’d seen his own bravery as nothing out of the ordinary.

  Dunne plunged into his story without any preliminary niceties. He said he was calling from the State Hospital in Buffalo. His sister had been sent there several years before after being diagnosed as a “feeble-minded epileptic.” The clerk in the superintendent’s office wouldn’t tell him anything except that she’d been released the previous autumn. Dunne put up a fuss and demanded to see her records. The clerk returned with a doctor who insisted the regulations were designed to protect the patients and couldn’t be ignored. Dunne said he was heading back to New York City that afternoon and asked Donovan if he could find anything and write to let him know. He ended the same way he’d begun, brusquely. If he said thanks, Donovan didn’t hear it.

  It was a week before Donovan got around to calling the superintendent and another week before he paid a visit to the hospital’s records room, where the file of Maura Dunne was waiting for him on a large oak table. “You may not take notes or remove any portion of the file,” the chief clerk told him. There wasn’t much to copy. Soon after she’d been admitted, a course of treatment had been decided: In the case of a patient in Miss Dunne’s category, both imbecilic and epileptic, sterilization is as much required as recommended. She is clearly a potential bearer of mentally inadequate offspring, and therefore, a salpingectomy is directed. A few more pages filled out Maura’s subsequent career at the hospital. In March 1915, a physician noted that Maura wasn’t dumb, as had been previously thought, but was quite capable of speech. Patient demonstrated a capacity for reasoning and cogitating beyond what had previously been thought possible. By September 1918, the file indicated, she no longer seemed to suffer from seizures. Given her marked improvement and asexualization, she was released to her own custody and provided with the fare back to her place of origin. There was nothing more.

  He wrote Dunne, reporting Maura’s sterilization and eventual discharge, and informing him there was nothing in her file to indicate her present whereabouts. It was several months before Dunne wrote back. This time he offered his thanks and reported that he’d been appointed a patrolman in New York City. He’d been looking for Maura but had no luck.

  Until last evening, Donovan had suspected he’d never hear from Dunne again. The number of men who contacted him grew fewer each year. But no matter how much time passed, the memory of the Great War was a tie that didn’t weaken. Forged in the blood and mire of the Western Front, their time in hell, it would always bind Donovan to his men.

  August 1938

  6

  The shelves in Professor Gerhard von S.’s Munich lecture hall are partially filled with medical tomes and reference works. Interspersed among the books are human skulls that the Professor has collected in his research as a racial anthropologist. An advisor to the SS, the exclusive guard that has superseded the rowdy street fighters of the SA, or Brown Shirts, the Professor has earned a reputation for his vigorous, single-minded pursuit of anthropometry, the comparative study of physical measurements which, supposedly, distinguish the races. In addressing his attentive, note-taking students, the Professor prefaces this day’s discussion of Jewish racial characteristics with a philosophic note. The ultimate enemy of science, he declares, isn’t ignorance but sentiment. “Consider, for example,” he says, “that the average citizen of the Reich will readily acknowledge the demonstrably poisonous effects of the Jew on normal society yet, practically in the same breath, will acquit Jews of his acquaintance as ‘good Jews,’ unlike the rest of their race.” The Professor holds up a skull but finds in it not a stark and universal symbol of our shared human destiny, the way Hamlet did with Yorick. Instead, he describes the cranial details that make this a Jewish skull and put it in its own racial category. “Science allows us to describe the disease,” he concludes. “What remains to be seen is whether we have the will to apply a cure.”

  —IAN ANDERSON, Travels in the New Germany

  ABWEHR HEADQUARTERS, BERLIN

  GRESSER’S FACE WAS as blank as ever. The expressionless mask every lifer wore. “Herr Admiral,” Gresser said, “Doctor Arnheim is here to see you.”

  “Arnheim?” Canaris struggled to control his temper. “Who told you to schedule a meeting with Arnheim? I told you quite the opposite, didn’t I?

  “Yes, Herr Admiral.”

  “Then are you purposely acting like a dolt, or does it come naturally?” Instantly he regretted his derisive tone, the bullying style of the martinet that he loathed.

  “He has been phoning for several weeks, Herr Admiral, and each time I’ve told him you were unavailable.” Gresser’s neutral countenance was unchanged. “But now he has arrived unannounced, with no appointment, and says he has business that cannot be postponed. I’ll send him away, if you wish.”

  “Never mind. It sounds as though he’ll pester me until he gets his interview. But we’ll make it quick. Poke your head in after a few minutes and remind me that I’m scheduled to be at a briefing upstairs.”

  A few moments later, Arnheim hunched forward in the chair, as if unsure whether to stay. He held his thin briefcase in his lap. “You look tired, Herr Admiral.”

  “I’m feeling fit. I had a nap. Perhaps I still look a bit sleepy.”

  “Naps provide refreshment for the brain. I recommend them to all my patients.” Arnheim eyed Gresser. As soon as the Corporal exited and pulled the door shut, Arnheim moved his chair closer to Canaris’s desk. “Admiral, I am a loyal German. Have you ever doubted that?”

  “Why would I?”

  “That’s my point. You know my record as a deputy leader of the German Medical Association and the assistant head of the Party’s Physicians League.”

  Canaris was almost certain what was next: request for a letter of recommendation for some position or promotion or honor. Perhaps all three. The purpose of the visit—the business of great urgency—revealed itself: a toady’s tale. “Doctor, before you go any further, I’m sure there are others better acquainted with
your record than I.”

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  “I didn’t think you had such a vice, Doctor.”

  Arnheim took out a cigarette case, removed one for himself, and offered one to Canaris. “I do now.”

  Declining a cigarette for himself, Canaris snapped open his gold lighter, flicking the flint wheel with his thumb, and held out the flame. Arnheim craned his neck forward, the cigarette held between his lips, inserted it in the flame and puffed. Suddenly, he gripped Canaris’s wrist. “Do you know I have a daughter?”

  For an instant, Canaris imagined Arnheim intended to take his pulse, but the tight, clammy pressure of Arnheim’s hand felt as though he were clinging. After a second, he let go. “Get to the point, Doctor, and do so quickly. I’m due at a briefing shortly.” This time Canaris didn’t regret his curt tone.

  Arnheim sank back in the chair. “I’ll be direct, Herr Admiral. My daughter is my only child, a beautiful, gifted girl, a brilliant student, a magnificent musician. During her first year at university, her mind became clouded, she heard voices. I thought it was some fleeting neurasthenic disorder, a symptom of overwork. Students are notoriously inclined to such. I ordered her to take a term off, which she did, but the condition worsened. She drifted into her own world for days at a time, and the lucent periods became increasingly intermittent. I took her to the best doctors. The diagnosis was schizophrenia. Several treatments were tried. Nothing worked. It was as if I were standing on shore watching her drown and there was nothing I could do.”

  The door opened and Gresser’s head popped in. “Herr Admiral, I apologize for intruding, but the briefing is about to begin.”

  “It’ll have to wait,” Canaris said. Gresser’s look of befuddlement as he closed the door was perhaps the first discernable emotion Canaris had ever seen cross the corporal’s face. “Forgive the interruption, Doctor. Please continue.”

  “A year after she was committed to the mental institution at Kaufbeuren-Irsee, in 1933, the Racial Hygiene Laws went into effect. She was subject to the same compulsory sterilization regulations as the other inmates. My wife pleaded with me to have our child spared. I suppose I might have intervened. But how could I support the medical crusade to save the German people from eugenical suicide, a cause I’d been part of my entire career, and spare my own daughter? If one was spared, why not all? I did nothing. She was sterilized, with the others. A salpingectomy was performed. Her fallopian tubes were cut.”

  Arnheim sighed and exhaled cigarette smoke in the same breath. “Next time I visited her she had entered one of those periods in which she was in possession of her faculties. She turned away and wouldn’t look at me. She has never talked to me since.” He slipped a folded piece of typescript from the briefcase on his lap. “Admiral, I’m not here to seek your sympathy, nor do I wish to involve you in matters that don’t concern you. I know you are a loyal soldier of the Reich but I thought you should be alerted to certain facts.” He laid the paper on the desk.

  “Medical matters are totally outside my jurisdiction,” Canaris said. The sheet was plain and nondescript, a simple piece of paper. Or perhaps not. Bait, perhaps. To either not report the doctor’s breach of security or to express sympathy or approval, both courses would be treason. The rats’ attempt to lure the recalcitrant cats to expose their true stripes, bit of fish, whiff of herring, here kitty, a few nibbles, a solid bite, snap, swoosh, crack, last sounds you hear as the metal bar breaks your felid neck.

  “This goes beyond the purely medical. It involves the whole nation.”

  “If it concerns internal security, it should be brought to the attention of General Heydrich. That’s his bailiwick, not mine.” Oster’s opinion: Himmler and Heydrich presume the overwhelming majority of the officer corps is entirely seduced and the rest too cowardly to do more than grumble. That gives us the crucial advantage of surprise. Heydrich’s warning: We will show no mercy to such scum, even though they wear a German uniform.

  “The leadership is aware of what’s involved.” Arnheim squashed his cigarette in the ashtray. “That’s why I’ve come to you, Herr Admiral. I presume you don’t know but believe you should. Reichsleiter Bouhler himself said it would eventually touch the whole nation, that it is, in his words, ‘central to the historic destiny of the Third Reich.’”

  Canaris smelled a slight lingering trace of lunch, hint of smoked herring that had sat too long on his desk. “When did he tell you about this?”

  “Reichsleiter Bouhler invited me to a reception at the chancellery shortly after the Führer’s return from Vienna. I thought it was to be a celebration. The mood of the whole country seemed to be of unadulterated joy. But there was only a handful of us. Dr. Karl Brandt, the Führer’s physician, Dr. Werner Heyde of the SS, and a few others, mostly medical men. We had a round of drinks. The atmosphere was somber. Bouhler soon asked us to retire to a nearby conference room, where he closed the door and said he had a vital and highly confidential matter to share.

  “Bouhler said war is inevitable. Austria is only a prelude. The great struggle against the globe-engirding hydra of Jewish Bolshevism is immediately ahead. Inevitably, this will put such great strains on the nation’s resources that a dramatic and rapid purification of the Reich will be required. Up to now, he said, we had recognized that the scientific dictum of ‘life unworthy of life’ necessitated sterilization of the unfit. They mustn’t be allowed to reproduce. But now we face a deeper, harder question: What was to be done with the ‘useless eaters’ filling our asylums and hospitals at a time when the healthy would need every possible ounce of strength to defend our race and secure its future? In the event of war, how could we best make room for wounded soldiers and prevent the drain on precious supplies of food and medicine by the legions of mental and physical defectives?

  “Bouhler asked that we give careful thought to these questions. The principle at stake was clear enough. Kindness to the weak is subversion of the strong. Compassion toward the unfit is treason to the race. Victory belongs to the merciless. What was left to determine was an efficient means of carrying it out. The Führer looked to us to show the way. He said that at least one bold practitioner had been carrying on an experiment in involuntary euthanasia for several years. He didn’t reveal the location but said the experiment was still proceeding secretly and successfully. Soon, he told us, the doctor who’d conducted it would be ‘back in the Reich’ and school us in the lessons he’d learned from his experience. Bouhler warned against any discussion or mention of what he’d told us outside our circle. Nothing should be committed to paper. Not yet.”

  Arnheim pushed the paper toward Canaris. “I have written down what was said as best as I can remember. Perhaps you think me disloyal. I’m willing to take that risk.”

  “You’re touching on private discussion that, however theoretical, would have grave ramifications if made public.”

  “‘Trust yourself, and you will know how to live.’ Goethe wrote that. Mostly, Admiral, I have trusted others to tell me what to do. Our whole nation has been expert at taking orders. Today, however, I trust myself, my own feelings and instincts, and in that trust I find that I’m no longer a eugenicist dedicated to abetting the triumph of the fit and the strong and willing to carry out any order to that end. I’m the father of a young woman whose suffering has been increased because of my callousness. I will not under any circumstances become a willing party to her murder. I will kill myself first.”

  “It’s merely a conversation you were privy to, Doctor. Talk, that’s all. No action has been taken.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Who else knows you came here?”

  “No one. I’m sorry to involve you. I realize it’s outside your jurisdiction. It’s just that the supply of decent men seems to grow shorter by the day. I think you are one. I couldn’t think of where else to go. I’m grateful to you for hearing me out. I hope, perhaps, when you’ve given it some thought, you might offer some advice about the best way to proceed.”

/>   An instant after Arnheim showed himself out, Gresser returned. “General Heydrich’s secretary called. The General wishes to know if you’ll be riding with him in the morning.”

  “Convey my regrets. I’m indisposed.” Canaris stood in front of the mantel. He ran his finger along the hull of the Dresden. On the voyage back to South America from Baltimore, they had been caught in a monstrous storm off Bermuda. The wind-driven swells beat the Dresden so relentlessly her engines choked. It seemed she might capsize but the crew got the engines fixed and the captain set her right. They rode out the rest of the storm without further incident. The next morning the navigator was incredulous at their position. “Foul weather or not,” he said, “it seems impossible we could have been blown this far off course.”

  Canaris took the paper into the bathroom. Scanning Arnheim’s typed summary of the meeting and the proposed extermination of Germany’s mental and physical defectives, he held the paper over the toilet, put his lighter beneath, and set it afire. As the flame raced up, he turned it sideways, making sure it crumpled and burned, and dropped it in the toilet just before the fire reached his fingers. He flushed long and hard, then again.

  He returned to his desk and smoked. After a few minutes, there was no longer any scent of herring. Only smoke.

  7

  Geographically, the Bronx is the odd man out amongst the five boroughs that comprise the metropolis of New York. Unlike Manhattan or Staten Island, which are enisled by water, and Brooklyn and Queens, which are part of Long Island, the Bronx is on the mainland of the United States. It is a stolid place of apartment buildings and modest homes, crowded in its southern and western regions, adjacent to Manhattan, still rural in the north and the east, but everywhere characterized by the aspirational plodding of its hard-working, if Depression-chastened inhabitants, most of whom are only one or two generations removed from the old world villages of their immigrant ancestors. Possessed of a first-class zoo and botanical gardens, several colleges and universities, one of which houses the American Hall of Fame, and a baseball stadium made famous by sports titan Babe Ruth, the Bronx has only one hotel worthy of the name. Rare is the visitor to New York who will spend more than a few hours in the Bronx, though those who do are often rewarded by the discovery of unexpected attractions.