The Trial of Fallen Angels

by James Kimmel, Jr.

  This painting is an extraordinarily valuable work of art, more likely to be found hanging in a museum than a publisher’s office. It is an original oil painting by the French Impressionist master Edgar Degas, and was a gift to Amina from a man, much like the man admiring it from the doorway, who also happened to find himself in the same predicament. Degas’s subjects in the painting are a bristly-bearded father dressed in a light overcoat and black top hat enjoying a cigar as he strolls along the edge of a Parisian park with his two handsomely dressed daughters and their dog, all moving in opposite directions at once. When Amina enters the office each morning and sees the painting, she recalls strolling with her own father on Saturday mornings along Dresden’s broad boulevards to the offices of Jos. A. Rabun & Sons, and then to a small café for lunch. Sometimes in the café she would meet Katerine Schrieberg and her father.

  Against a wall in Amina’s office adjacent to the Degas painting stands a polished walnut case filled with copies of four books of poetry published by Bette Press, the company Amina formed when she acquired the newspaper. She named the entity in honor of her young cousin who had been raped and murdered in Kamenz. The bindings of each of these four books bear in gold leaf the Bette Press colophon—a square imprint of a little girl eternally fixed in mid-swing beneath the thick branches of a poplar tree, her hair and dress rippled softly by a breeze. The original wood carving of this colophon, still stained with ink from the first run of cover pages, rests on top of the bookcase. It is the work of master printer Albrecht Bosch, who studied at the Bauhaus School before fleeing the Nazis to Chicago. Mr. Bosch convinced Amina to print books alongside her newspaper and to employ him as her production manager. The design of the colophon, inspired by an early photograph of Bette Rabun, did all the persuading that was necessary.

  The newsprint salesman at the other end of the telephone finally grasps the meaning of Amina’s words and concedes the ten-percent discount, all of which, he wishes her to know, will come out of his commission. She thanks him for the gesture but feels no gratitude or sympathy. The Cheektowaga Register is his largest client, and he has done very well for himself.

  Amina places the handset into its cradle, smiles, lights a cigarette, and observes the man waiting at the door. She has not met him before but finds his apprehension familiar. Three others like him have passed through her office, each conveying the same sense of anxiety, each indebted to her but somehow indignant.

  Ten days earlier, this man was named Gerhard Haber. Twelve years before that, he was SS-Einsatzgruppen colonel Gerhard Haber—a fact confided to Amina in a cable from Hanz Stössel, who asked if she would be willing to help another German family as she herself had once been helped. Since the fall of the Third Reich, the Habers had been on the run, living in considerable discomfort in the Paraná River valley in Argentina. The Nazi hunters had tracked them as far as South America.

  “Completely false,” Stössel assured her concerning the war-crimes allegations against Haber, the details of which she did not want to hear. Too much knowledge, she had learned, is dangerous.

  Sitting in her office pondering Haber, Amina is unsure exactly why she accepts these risks, first in helping Jews in Kamenz and now Nazis in America. Perhaps she does it for the thrill of knowing secrets of life and death. Whatever the reason, she has come to blame both the Jews and the Nazis for what happened to her and her family in Kamenz, and she convinces herself that given the opportunity to do it all over, she would permit the Gestapo to load the Schriebergs onto the train to Auschwitz, and the Nazi hunters to take the Habers to Israel. But she does not have it to do over.

  Hanz Stössel had asked Amina to provide Haber and his family with false passports and new identities in exchange for another artwork of great value. She agreed, and Haber was there now to collect the passports and tender his payment. It was an easy thing for Amina. She told Albrecht Bosch what to print and he did exactly that, without question, in exchange for her indulgence of his expensive appetite for more sophisticated printing equipment and additions to his typeface collections.

  Amina did not consult with Haber in the selection of names. Having never given birth to a child, she took great pleasure in bestowing new identities upon the people sent to her by Mr. Stössel.

  She taps the ashes from her cigarette. “Come in and close the door,” she says to Haber.

  Haber complies, and Amina retrieves a single passport from her drawer and examines it.

  Gerry Hanson is a nice name, she thinks. Faithful at least to the first consonant and vowel of the original. And completely inconspicuous.

  She hands it over to Haber for his approval. His eyes light up as he examines the authentic-looking exit stamp from Buenos Aires, which appears over the talons and tail feathers of a perfectly reproduced American eagle. The document is flawless.

  “Danke,” he says.

  Amina raises her eyebrows.

  “Sorry,” Haber corrects himself, practicing his new language. “Pardon me. I meant to say, ‘Thank you.’”

  Amina gestures toward the guest chair and directs the table fan toward Haber—not out of concern for his comfort but to disperse the offensive scent of his perspiring body, which has suddenly overtaken the office. She retrieves four more passports from her desk and opens them. “Remind me again,” Amina says. “What are the names and ages of your wife and children?”

  Haber tenses as if he has suddenly forgotten, then regains control of himself. “Hanna, age thirty-nine; Franz, age fifteen; Glenda, age thirteen; Claudia, ten.”

  Amina examines each passport and slides it across the desk to Haber. “Hanna is now Helen,” she says. “Franz is Frank, Glenda is Gladys, and Claudia is Cathy.”

  Haber appears disappointed. Amina frowns. “You don’t like the names?” she asks.

  Haber shakes his head. “No, they are acceptable,” he says, not wanting to insult the woman who holds so much power over his fate. He examines the passport for his youngest daughter. “If I may,” he says timidly, “the birth date on Claudia’s—I mean, Cathy’s—is off by several years. Given her young age, it might attract attention.”

  Amina takes the passport, examines it, scowls, and tosses it into her wastepaper basket. Haber becomes rigid, fearing that he has just ruined everything. But Amina does not vent her dissatisfaction upon him. She asks him for the correct birth date, scribbles it on a sheet of paper, and calls out to her secretary. The woman appears immediately with a steno pad. Amina is pleased by her efficiency in front of her guest.

  “Alice,” she says, handing her the slip of paper, “please take this to Albrecht in the print shop and tell him he must reprint the Cathy Hanson document with this birth date. He’ll understand. Tell him I need a rush. It must be completed this afternoon.” Amina does not explain the nature of the project, and Alice does not ask. She leaves and Haber relaxes slightly.

  “Thank you,” Haber says, carefully pronouncing the words.

  “Welcome,” Amina replies.

  For a brief moment, Amina feels sorry for Haber, but she quickly dismisses this sentimentality and reverts into the shell of Survivor Amina.

  “You have something for me?” she asks impatiently, looking at the cylinder in Haber’s lap.

  “Yes, of course,” Haber says.

  He stands the cylinder on end, removes the cap, and extracts a long roll of dingy canvas, producing a small cloud of black soot. He apologizes for the mess as he unrolls the painting, which despite charred edges is in otherwise good condition. It depicts a funeral procession under gray winter skies—a coffin being carried through a snow-covered churchyard into the shattered ruins of a Gothic chapel. The name at the bottom right corner of the work is Caspar David Friedrich.

  Amina touches the canvas and smiles. She has long admired the nineteenth-century Romantics, but most especially Friedrich, who himself lived in Dresden. The private girls’ school Amina attended in Kamenz, only a few blocks away from the boys’ school in which Helmut was killed, saw to it, by Naz
i decree, that she learned first and most about Germany’s own great artists.

  “Where did you get it?” she asks.

  Haber hesitates. “It has been in my family,” he says vaguely. His evasiveness reminds Amina of the accusations against him, and she decides not to press for more information.

  “They say Friedrich was influenced by Runge, but I don’t see it in his work,” Amina says. “Do you?”

  “I trust you are satisfied?” Haber replies eagerly, either ignoring or not understanding the question.

  “Yes,” Amina says, more coldly now and in the manner with which she dispatched the newsprint salesman. She exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke and places the passports back into her drawer. “I’m sure Hanz told you that I would require authentication. Someone from the Buffalo Academy of Fine Arts will look at it this afternoon. Assuming there is no problem, you may return at four-thirty for your passports.”

  Haber rises and forces a smile from his lips.

  “Yes,” he says, bowing his head slightly. “I will be here.” He turns and walks out of the office. Amina closes the door behind him and phones the curator at the fine arts academy.

  —

  AMINA’S OFFICE DISAPPEARS and the Courtroom reemerges into the foreground. Hanz Stössel is standing at the center. Luas, Elymas, and I sit in the chairs at the back.

  “Do you still believe she is a victim?” Elymas asks me.

  “Victim of what?” I ask.

  Before Elymas can answer, the Courtroom disappears again and we are back in the office.

  —

  AMINA PROPS THE canvas up on her credenza, leaning books against the corners to keep it erect. She steps back to imagine how it will look when framed. From this perspective, taking more time to observe the scene, the mourners in the painting appear to her as her own family must have appeared when carrying Helmut to his tomb beneath the twisted girders and broken concrete of the memorial her father had assembled for him from the debris of his school.

  —

  “VICTIM OF INJUSTICE,” Elymas says. I can hear his voice but we are still in the office.

  —

  AMINA WIPES TEARS from her eyes as the memory of that terrible day envelops her. She has been so consumed with the horror of Kamenz all these years that she has rarely thought of poor Helmut. She succumbs to the unanswerable guilt of such neglect, and of having named the press for her cousin, Bette, instead of her own brother, or her own mother or father.

  —

  “THE CREATURE WEEPS,” Elymas whispers. “You feel her anguish, Brek Cuttler. But where is the compassion of her Creator? Can you feel that touching her soul? Does the throne express even the slightest concern? One tender thought or word? Where is justice? When will the scales be balanced?”

  —

  HELMUT’S DEATH WAS, in the final analysis, an accident. The Allied pilots could not have known their bombs would raze a school filled with children. They did not look Helmut in the eyes and execute him. That is why she has been willing to forgive them and, therefore, to forget. But not the Soviets. No, their crime was deliberate and their faces depraved. There can be no forgiveness for them. Ever.

  This self-pitying does not last long. Amina, the Survivor, will not permit it. She rubs the mascara stains from her cheeks and blows her nose. She resolves to display Cloister Cemetery in the Snow in memory of her brother Helmut and to tell those who ask that it means this to her.

  And then an idea strikes her.

  Amina has been planning to publish an editorial on the anniversary of the death of Senator Joseph McCarthy. She had been an admirer of McCarthy, not only agreeing philosophically with his fanatical distrust of communists but also embracing his rabid patriotism as a means of deflecting attention from her own Nazi heritage. Embracing Joseph McCarthy made as much good business sense to Amina Rabun and The Cheektowaga Register in the 1950s as embracing Hitler made good business sense to her father and Jos. A. Rabun & Sons in the 1930s. But there was also a deeper emotional attraction to McCarthy, for he stood alone in Amina’s mind as the only one who truly understood the evil of the Soviet Union and the suffering of its victims. These understandings became the germ of Amina’s forthcoming editorial. She would explain in personal terms what the Rabuns of Kamenz had lost to the Red hordes—and she would bravely contrast that with what they lost to the Allied bombs. It would be a moving, convincing, wonderful editorial. A fitting tribute to Joseph McCarthy.

  —

  THE LIGHT IN the Courtroom flickers, signaling that the presentation of Amina Rabun is about to shift to another scene. I am worried by Stössel’s selections for the presentation. He has omitted Amina’s entire life in Germany and the sacrifices she made for the Schriebergs. As I suspected, he is presenting only the dark side of her life and character. She has no hope of being acquitted, no hope of absolution.

  24

  The final act in the presentation of Amina Rabun begins. It is winter, February 1974, and Amina is just returning from a three-week Caribbean vacation to her rundown, drafty mansion in Buffalo, built in the 1920s by a Great Lakes shipping baron. She is accompanied by Albrecht Bosch, who has enjoyed his second visit to the tropics as her companion.

  Amina and Albrecht have become intimate friends but not lovers, for Amina is adamantly asexual and Albrecht adamantly homosexual. They learned these secrets about each other the day they first met, in a bright tavern in the Allentown section of the city on the second anniversary of Amina’s divorce, which also happened to be the first anniversary of Albrecht’s separation from the artist who convinced him to come to Buffalo from Chicago and then left him for a younger man.

  Thus, it was a common nationality and a common fate that brought Amina and Albrecht together—but it was Bette Press that made them inseparable. Albrecht Bosch was in love with the printed word. He invited anyone who would listen into his magical world of typefaces and printing presses and, once there, would explain with an artist’s passion how a simple serif can arouse anger or evoke serenity, and how paper texture and weight can be grave or lyrical, pompous or comforting. He introduced Amina to the ancient struggle between legibility and creativity that ties typography to tradition like no other art form and allows for only subtle innovation. And like Amina’s early teachers of Romanticism, he appealed to her Germanic pride by reminding her that Johannes Gutenberg gifted the printing press to humanity. In the joyful marriage of paper and ink that followed, Amina and Albrecht experienced the harmony of opposites that had eluded their private lives.

  The mansion is cold when the travelers arrive back from their journey to the tropics, infuriating Amina because she had left specific instructions for the housekeeper to turn up the heat two days before their return. Amina asks Albrecht to adjust the thermostat and light a fire in the study, then heads for the mail, which has been stacked neatly for her on the large mahogany dining room table. She scans through the envelopes quickly, searching for anything that looks important or interesting and setting aside the monotony of bills and solicitations. Two envelopes fit the former criteria: a large, beige square of heavy cotton-fiber bond addressed to “Ms. Amina Rabun and Guest,” and a menacing business envelope with a return address of “Weinstein & Goldman, Attorneys-at-Law.” She takes both envelopes into the kitchen, puts on a pot of water for tea, and opens the invitation first. To her delight, she reads that the prestigious Niagara Society has, for the first time, requested the favor of her presence at its annual Spring Ball—the social event in Buffalo each year.

  “Albrecht!” she calls.

  “What is it?” Albrecht coughs. His head is in the fireplace, which has filled with smoke. He has already gone through half a Sunday newspaper but still can’t coax the wood to ignite.

  “We’re going to the Niagara Society Ball!” Amina sings. “Get your tuxedo pressed.”

  “Not if I die of asphyxiation first,” Albrecht coughs.

  The telephone rings as the water comes to a boil.

  “Can you get that, A
lbrecht?” Amina asks. “The tea’s on.”

  Albrecht happily abandons the fire and takes the call in the living room while Amina pours the bubbling water into a creamy Belleek teapot. She adds Earl Grey tea leaves to the infuser, sets a tray with two matching cups, and carries it into the study. After fixing herself a cup and settling into her favorite wingback chair, she opens the envelope from the law firm, finding the enclosed letter:

  Dear Ms. Rabun:

  I represent Mrs. Katerine Schrieberg-Wolfson in her capacity as Executrix of the Estate of Mr. and Mrs. Jared A. Schrieberg.

  As you know, my client has written to you on several occasions concerning ownership of certain theaters and real property in Dresden acquired by your family from the decedents during the war for the sum of 35,000 Reichsmarks, equivalent at the time to approximately $22,000 U.S. You no doubt realize the purchase price was far below fair market value and the sale was made under duress and threat of seizure by the Nazi government and incarceration of the decedents in the Nazi death camps. Therefore the sale was, and is, invalid.

  Mrs. Schrieberg-Wolfson, on behalf of the Estate, seeks rescission of the purchase contract and return of all property. In that connection, she has previously offered in writing to refund you the $22,000 plus interest from the date of the sale. You have not responded to Mrs. Schrieberg-Wolfson’s offer and she has, therefore, retained me to take the necessary steps to rescind the contract and recover the property or its value.