She was just as intolerant of me as she was of Ezra, and there came a time when I’d finally had enough. I refused to be hurt by her rejection any longer. I felt that her behavior was the childish reaction of a spoiled princess who didn’t know how to make the best of the cards she’d been dealt. She had to count herself lucky that I left her so well provided for when I finally turned my back on her and dove head over heels into my work.
In London I had found office space for Farmacom in a large residential building with a great view of the river and Waterloo Bridge; we also installed a manufacturing facility just outside the city. I spent most of my time in London, which was getting the full brunt of the Blitz, especially in that first year. The air raid sirens heralding bombs raining down became a daily routine to which, strange to say, we soon grew accustomed. The first few weeks we’d run to the bomb shelters as fast as we were able, but as time went on we became more blasé; I would keep working when the sirens started going off. Not until I could actually hear the bombs falling close by would I grab the folder with my most important papers, kept always within reach, and dive into the corridor to get as far away as possible from the windows in case of shattered glass. It happened only once, toward the end of the war, that a bomb actually hit a building right next to ours. The building shook on its foundations, and we watched in astonishment as the entire façade collapsed. It was a hallucinatory experience.
That constant walking of the fine line between life and death tends to bring out the most delicious sense of abandon in people. I frequently spent the night in the city, and seldom spent it alone. The daily threat of death seemed to unleash a devil-may-care promiscuity calling for instant gratification. It was as if the bombs were blanketing the city with testosterone, infecting everyone, women and men alike. Ah, sweet days and nights, when I could again indulge myself completely and without guilt; since my wife had more or less banished me from her sight, I didn’t consider it cheating. And besides, I was no longer alone in being a slave to my urges, but was surrounded by women unabashedly on the prowl for male companionship, while men like me were driven more than ever before by unquenchable cravings, as if our lust could keep death at bay.
But mostly I was working, working. I had to pull out all the stops to keep both Farmacom and the De Paauw Slaughterhouse and Meatpacking Co. afloat, and do everything I could to prevent the Nazis from getting their hands on our company, our patents, and our licenses. I transferred our assets to an offshore corporation in Curaçao, out of reach of the fiend who was planning to loot every Jewish business he could get his hands on—now conveniently dubbed “enemy property.” I added a clause to the bylaws preventing any member of our board living in the occupied Netherlands from having a say over any current transaction, thus tying the hands of the directors who had been left behind. Any director who either chose to collaborate with the enemy or was forced to do his bidding no longer had any say over our foreign subsidiaries. Meanwhile, we were able to strengthen our ties with the North and South American firms already allied with us, forging ahead as best we could with research and production in order to keep the business going in the absence of the parent company. I had a hell of a time trying to keep the various companies supplied with the raw materials they needed; communication was an extremely tough task at best, and most of the time near impossible. I did miss Aaron, who’d had such a good rapport with our partners, the Argentines in particular. At this difficult time my brother could have played an important part in keeping our foreign divisions going. He would have been our point man overseas, where he’d have helped the local management teams navigate an increasingly complex business climate—a minefield of potential pitfalls. Production was being held up by a shortage of raw materials, exacerbated by the fact that the ships transporting the necessary commodities were regularly blasted to a watery grave by the U-boats deployed by that hound from hell.
I realized the Nazis were plotting to take over the Dutch parent company with some stratagem that would guarantee acceptance of their grab abroad, in order to keep the overseas assets from splitting off from those falling into German hands. Levine doubtlessly had an important role to play there, since he was the only shareholder left in the Netherlands. Fortunately, our bylaws stipulated that no one could sell their shares without offering them to the other shareholders first.
At one point I did find out that Levine had apparently been negotiating with Berlin about trading his shares in return for permission to emigrate to America with his family. As if he was entitled to change the rules as he saw fit! It galled me to think the prof was prepared to ride roughshod over our corporate rules in order to save his own skin, so I did the only thing I could: I forbade the foreign subsidiaries from doing business with the parent firm. The thought of the great scumbag getting his dirty paws on all our hard-won patents and licenses made me shudder. As long as that double-crossing bastard was running the show over there, our little backwater would be off-limits, verboten, and, in case the Nazis managed to wrangle Levine’s shares away from him, we severed all our branches from the parent company that was once so dear to my heart.
Partnering with my cousin Simcha proved to have been an inspired decision. He became a loyal and helpful comrade in our British soul-hormone enterprise; with him I never had to worry about the kind of strife that had arisen between Levine and me. Simcha was much too accommodating and compliant for that to happen. And so Farmacom did after all become the family business I had so much wanted to share with my brother. When Simcha and I put our heads together, there was no dissension. I knew that even after the war was over I’d want to continue our partnership, which would bring us even greater global reach.
Our prime minister, Pieter Gerbrandy, invited me to join the Advisory Board of the Dutch Government in Exile in London. My ideas for restoring our country’s economy once the war was inevitably won, and becoming a prominent trading partner in the global marketplace, were enthusiastically received. I also became a welcome guest at the lavish parties organized by Bernhard, the prince consort.
As the Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, Simcha and I came up with a blueprint for modernizing our company. It was a grandiose plan that called for some radical housecleaning; we would have to hack through the Gordian knot that had caused so many problems at Farmacom. It would be one of my first tasks once peace was at hand.
41 …
Early in the morning of Tuesday, May 8, 1945, that joyful day when the self-proclaimed Übermenschen finally capitulated, I returned to the Netherlands. A military airplane full of self-important government officials had flown me across the North Sea, and an army jeep had given me a ride home. There I stood, staring up at the large, impressive house, my parents’ pride and joy, which, to my own surprise, I had so often longed for the past five years. It isn’t until you have had the rug pulled out from under you that you discover man isn’t all that different from a plant: pluck him from his roots, and he’ll wilt.
I removed the house key from my wallet; in London I had kept it in the top drawer of my desk and, though I’m normally the least sentimental of men, took it out and cupped it in my hand at least once a day. With some trepidation I inserted it into the lock. It turned effortlessly. I pushed the heavy door open, stepped inside the stately hall, and put down my suitcase. I stood in the very spot where I had stopped to hang up my coat since I was a child. The chrome modernist coatrack Rivka had bought to replace the antique wooden stand that had graced the entry before she arrived on the scene was empty, and when I hung it up, my overcoat was a lonely, incongruous sight. I shivered in the chill of the lifeless, deserted building.
Wandering through the rooms, I saw that the house was outwardly unchanged. The basic structure was intact, all the different components were still there, and yet it was not the same. It was life that was missing, the life manifest in the murmur of voices, in laughter, in a Duke Ellington recording coming from behind the closed doors of the living room, the smell of cooking tickling your nostr
ils and making you realize you were famished, the sight of a spinning top trailing in the hall, a stuffed animal on the stairs, a bunch of tulips on the sideboard. My house was still all in one piece, but it was as desolate as the frozen wastelands of Stalingrad after the Krauts had their asses kicked out there.
My footsteps echoed in the empty rooms and the doors I opened made an ominous creaking sound. My home was in immaculate condition; I knew it must be the work of our loyal servants. But where were they? I crossed the living room in a daze, picking up an object here and there and turning it over in my hands, staring at it as if to remind myself what it meant to me. The chrome Bakelite ashtray; the picture the children had made for Rivka’s birthday; the red roses porcelain dish, which Rivka used for offering guests chocolates or cookies; the copper Winkelman clock on the mantelpiece, its silver face showing the hour of our departure five years ago; the empty silver cigarette case that still held the scent of tobacco—a roomful of objects that had witnessed a life that was now a thing of the past.
When I heard the front door open I hurried back to the hall to see my faithful old Marieke standing there. The war years had changed the unflappable custodian of our household into a frail old woman. Her body seemed to have shrunk, you could see the pale skin of her scalp through her sparse graying hair, and her bony frame was dwarfed by her threadbare summer coat. Startled, she stared at me, blinking, then cried, “Mr. Motke, is that you?” As she began walking stiffly toward me, I met her halfway, and—quite unheard-of for us—we fell into each other’s arms like a mother and son reunited after a long separation. Then she held me at arm’s length, looked me up and down critically, and finally exclaimed, “You are well, thank God!”
“Yes,” I replied, “quite well, and you, how have you fared?”
“Oh, you know, an old rat knows how to avoid the trap, I’m just happy it’s over. What about your wife and the children? They must be so big now, how will I recognize them? I’m so looking forward to seeing them again!”
“They are all fine and in good health, but they’ll be staying in England for now,” I answered.
“That’s wise,” she agreed, “there’s so little to be had here yet, they’re better off waiting for things to get back to normal a bit. Everything’s still rationed, so …”
“No,” I corrected her, “Rivka and the children are not coming back. Well, possibly for a holiday sometimes, but my wife and I—we are separating.”
The old woman’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh dear,” she said, and, after a long pause, added, “Troubles can tear people apart, but they can also bring people closer sometimes. What a shame, what a shame.” She shook her head.
The problems between Rivka and myself had not escaped the servants’ notice, and apparently hadn’t been forgotten, even after years of war and occupation.
“Ah well,” I replied, “my wife has decided she no longer wishes to be with me, much to my regret.”
I was surprised at myself for blurting out that Rivka had left me. I’d been planning to save face in public. Marieke shook her head again and said firmly, “Well, then we’ll just have to take extra good care of you, Mr. Motke. Would you like a cup of coffee? It isn’t real, of course, it’s fake, but nice and hot anyway, I always say.”
“Yes please,” I said, “I’ll come into the kitchen and sit with you, and then you can tell me what happened here.”
After drinking my ersatz coffee with Marieke and receiving a quick briefing from her on what had transpired here over the past five years, I walked over to the factory. It was with some emotion that I walked through the gate and into the yard. Just inside the entryway yawned a huge bomb crater; not a single window of the main building was still intact, the broken panes a patchwork of cardboard. Our factory hadn’t gotten off scot-free, but the damage wasn’t all that bad from the looks of it. I walked into the administration building, where I found my dear Agnes—not half as pretty as before, but as loyal as ever—still sitting behind her tidy desk, as if for five long years she had never left her post. She looked up when she heard the door open and, greeting me with a cry of joy, jumped up and flew into my arms.
“Mr. Motke, you’re back!” she cried, hugging me as if she’d never let me go.
“Yes,” I said, gazing at her, “I am back and you are still here, I’m so pleased to see.”
The Allies had liberated our corner of the country half a year before the war was officially over, so during the past several months I’d been able to correspond with our various managers, giving me a good idea how the factory had weathered the war.
Now, back on home ground, I was keen to swing into action and put together a new and revitalized organization, a modern conglomerate of companies from around the world, bringing the De Paauw Slaughterhouse and Meatpacking Co., Farmacom, Farmacom Ltd., and our American subsidiary all under one umbrella. I envisaged a cutting-edge multinational that would have an important role to play in the development of drugs discovered or improved upon over the past few years despite the war’s intrusion, just waiting to be readied for distribution. Penicillin, DDT, vitamins, steroids, synthetic variants of the soul hormones—an enormous world market was there for the taking. We had already lost so much time. To catch up, I wanted a team of people I could implicitly rely on, people without even a whiff of collaboration stench about them. Our brand-new firm had to be swept clean, purged of anyone suspected of collusion with that washed-up gang of swindlers.
At my request, the entire workforce of both the slaughterhouse and Farmacom was ordered to gather in the canteen just before lunch. The people thronged inside with much excitement, and there was a festive mood in the air—elation, even. Peace had been declared that day, the peace so ardently longed for, and the fact that it coincided with the boss’s return brought out fervent expressions of emotion. There was a good deal of back-slapping, handshaking, hat-doffing, curtseying, congratulating, and embracing; many a tear was shed, wiped away with handkerchiefs extracted from sleeves or overalls, and, yes, even one or two demure pecks on the cheek, although I was careful not to be the one initiating this. A new beginning, a completely fresh start, was the wish filling each and every heart, the thought reverberating through every head, there in that overcrowded canteen. It was a wonderful moment in which we all keenly felt that the lengthy separation had not broken our team spirit.
I gave a short speech saying how happy I was that the terror that had gripped our country and the whole Continent was now behind us. I asked for a minute of silence for all the relatives, friends, and strangers who had fallen for our fatherland, and whose sacrifice had made it possible for us to breathe the air of freedom again. I also said we should not forget those whose fate was still unknown, and that I wanted us all to stay strong and keep hoping for their safe return. I was thinking of Aaron, of course; though I had not yet had any news of him, I was almost certain he was dead.
(On a cold morning in January 1944, I had sat up in bed, awoken not by the air raid sirens, not by the roar of bombers overhead or by the screech of falling bombs, but by the feeling of being stabbed in the gut. It felt as if some force was slashing open my torso and ripping out part of me, the way a butcher cuts through the blood vessels attached to a calf’s heart in stripping the dead animal of that vital organ. I tried to lie quietly and not give in to the urge to roll up into a ball from the excruciating pain. And then suddenly the image of Aaron came to me, the way he had sat facing me the last time I’d seen him, emaciated and glum. The pain began slowly to seep out of my body, and a feeling of emptiness, a dead zone, seemed to have taken root inside me ever since. I can’t explain it, but from that moment on I was convinced my twin brother, Aaron, was no longer alive.)
I ended my speech by expressing my profound gratitude to everyone who had tried to resist or sabotage the fiend, no matter how humble or highly placed; anyone who’d had the guts to act heroically and refused to give in to fear. I assured them that each and every lowdown traitor or collaborator would get what was
coming to him. Then we all sang the national anthem, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house—the sound of sniffling nearly drowned out the bracing words. With that, the assembly came to an end.
At my meeting with the skeleton executive staff that afternoon, I asked about those who were missing. No one was able to give me any information about my brother. No one had seen him, and nothing was known about his fate. There was plenty of information about Levine, however. It turned out that he was one of the very few Jews who had survived the war in Amsterdam, in his own home, and neither he, his wife, nor their one daughter still living at home had even had to wear the Jewish star. How that was possible nobody knew, but there was plenty of speculation that he must have taken advantage of his many important connections, and that he could only have saved his neck by collaborating with the enemy. I remembered the rumors that had reached me about Levine’s attempting to trade his shares in the company for an exit permit. That ploy had apparently not worked, but he still seemed to have managed to pull some strings. He who spits into the wind spits in his own face. Naturally, the other executives, the ones who had stayed at their post during the occupation, had cooperated with the German authorities by keeping the factory churning out our products at the scumbags’ behest; I had to take their word for it that they’d only done what was best for the company. By staying on the job, they had tried to forestall a total takeover by the Hun so that the firm’s precious secrets wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. They assured me that in their dealings they’d always had my best interest in mind, finessing it the way they thought I would have done wherever possible. Although I had resolved to give every collaborator the boot, I now realized that a certain opportunistic expediency had been unavoidable. I could hardly get rid of the entire administrative staff, even though some had cooperated rather enthusiastically with the occupying forces. Having to run a severely truncated operation just when it was going to take a gigantic effort to make up for lost time would be most inopportune. I therefore decided to sack only the true turncoats, or those tangentially implicated on account of their background or some other connection with the crooked mob. I was by no means the only one to take that position. Our compatriots’ antipathy to anything that smacked of our neighbors to the east in those months right after liberation found an outlet in widespread harassment and abuse, fanatical hatred, and harsh reprisals against anyone of Teutonic origin, making no distinction between the criminals who’d been licking the brownshirts’ asses, and the assholes’ victims.
The Hormone Factory: A Novel Page 19