The Devil's Madonna

by Sharon Potts

  Leli brought her arms in front of her chest. It was too cold in the room, but her trembling went beyond what her skin was feeling. She loved him, so why didn’t she want him to make love to her?

  Wulfie pulled off his jacket, undid his pants. He was breathing quickly—low shallow breaths like a runner after a sprint.

  He turned her face toward the sofa and pushed her roughly against the cushions. He pulled her slip up and ripped off her panties, scratching her skin with his nails.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  He pressed harder against her, trying to enter her. She wasn’t ready. She tightened her muscles, resisting him.

  He pushed harder.

  Outside, the wind was pounding against the windows.

  “Stop,” she whimpered into the sofa cushion.

  And then he thrust inside her. The pillow absorbed her scream.

  He pounded into her, over and over and over.

  She twisted and tried to pull away, but he was holding her too tightly.

  “Please, Wulfie. Stop.”

  Over her shoulder, she could see his face contorted into something ugly and unrecognizable.

  He pounded and pounded into her, his head whipping up and down, up and down, a lock of dark hair against his forehead, sweat running down his cheeks into his moustache, his gray beard hanging from one side of his face.

  His beard hanging loose from one side of his face.

  Her scream caught in her chest.

  Then she let it all out.

  56

  Kali heard a scream. She ran from her bedroom to her grandmother’s.

  Lillian was sitting up in bed, frantically looking around the room.

  Kali turned on the lamp. “It’s okay. It’s just me.”

  “He’s here. I know he’s here.”

  “I’ve locked the doors. There’s no one in the house but us.”

  Lillian put her feet over the side of the bed and started toward her bathroom.

  “Wait. Use the walker.”

  But Lillian ignored her and zigzagged across the room.

  Kali could hear her shifting things around in her closet. She wondered if Lillian was looking for the key to the storage rooms. It was a good thing Kali had put it back in the hidden sewing cabinet.

  A moment later, Lillian left the closet, turning the light off behind her. She seemed calmer.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “He hasn’t been here, yet. He hasn’t found it.” She hobbled back to the bed and sat down on the edge.

  “Found what?”

  Lillian shook her head.

  “The tiny painting you mentioned the other day?”

  Lillian’s eyes widened.

  “Is it valuable?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You said there was a painting of your mother that you kept in your purse. Is that what you’re afraid someone is trying to steal from you?”

  Lillian got up and went to the chiffonier. She picked up the photo of Kali’s grandfather.

  “I’m sorry, Harry. I miss her, too.” She kissed the photo. “And I’ll keep my promise.”

  She put the photo back on the chiffonier and got back into bed. “I’m tired.”

  “So you’re not going to tell me?”

  Lillian closed her eyes. “No. Never.”

  Kali took the small painting from her room and went down to the kitchen. She was furious with her grandmother for refusing to talk about it. Was that what happened with Kali’s mother the day she had come here looking for the painting? Her mother had been very excited about giving it to Kali as a birthday gift. Had she found it covered in white paint and then confronted Lillian in anger? Her mother had always been volatile. Could there be any connection to her having a car accident that afternoon?

  Kali turned on the kitchen light and examined the small rectangular shape. The latex paint was cracking, the surface beneath it bumpy, as though the artist had layered the original paint on heavily, which would explain the rectangular outline of oil paint on the handkerchief.

  An experienced artist trying to cover over an existing oil painting permanently would first have sanded or pumiced down the original, then painted over it with lead oil ground. Latex paint doesn’t adhere well to an oil-painted surface. But Lillian, if she was the one who painted over the original, wouldn’t have known that, or maybe she just used what was expedient. Kali thought about the cans of latex wall paint in the storage room.

  She put her fingernail into one of the cracks and chipped away some of the paint. She wished she could drive to her studio and do this properly, but she didn’t want to leave Lillian alone in the house. She’d have to remove the outer layer of paint here. Her fingernails were too short, so she got a knife from the utensil drawer, started at the top left corner and went across to the right side. The paint popped away in small chips.

  The background color was a pomegranate red. Then she uncovered a brightness, like a ray of light.

  Kali peeled off the next section, exposing what seemed to be a white hood, then blonde curls, two arms raised and bent at an artificial angle, like in primitive Egyptian art. This must have been why Kali’s mother had wanted Kali to see the painting. There was a definite resemblance to Kali’s own work.

  She chipped away down the center of the painting.

  She gasped when she saw the face. The blue eyes, the hint of a smile. Lillian had been right. The woman in the picture looked both like Kali’s mother and like her great-grandmother in the locket photo.

  Whoever had made this was a talented artist. The painting was very likely quite valuable. Maybe she should wait until she got to her studio and not risk ruining it. But the content was more important to Kali than the painting’s market value. She kept chipping and peeling.

  More blonde curls, another pair of blue eyes. A cherub. Like the cherubim Kali painted, the head too large for its torso.

  Kali stopped.

  A Madonna and child. A painting with religious connotations. Was that why Lillian had painted over it? Because she was disturbed to see her Jewish mother portrayed as a Christian symbol?

  Kali peeled away the next section. Two more arms held the cherub. No. That wasn’t quite right. The woman’s four arms radiated out from the cherub’s torso, in a pinwheel formation.

  The result was disturbing, unnatural. Not like the four integrated arms Kali made in her own work. These arms seemed odious, symbolic, reminding her of something she couldn’t quite place.

  She pushed the knife under the white paint with less care, anxious to see the artist’s signature in the corner.

  And there it was in a reddish brown. ALT. Unfamiliar initials.

  She put the painting down and studied it from a distance.

  Four white arms against a red background. And then she realized what she was seeing.

  Not arms, but a big white swastika.

  57

  Kali went shouting up the stairs. “Wake up, Lillian. Wake up, damn you.”

  She turned on the nightstand lamp, knocking over a glass of water. “I’m tired of lies. I’m sick and tired of all your bullshit lies.”

  Her grandmother had the blanket pulled up over her mouth. She looked back at Kali with terror in her eyes. “Gott im Himmel! What’s happened?”

  Kali brandished the small painting. “Who painted this? Why do you have it?”

  “Oh, my God. Where, where did you find that?” She started getting out of bed. “It’s hidden. I have the key.”

  “No, Lillian. It wasn’t in the storage room. Someone hid it in my mother’s portrait. And I want to know why. Did my mother put it there? What did you tell her? Who are you really? This time, I want to know the truth.”

  “Hidden in her portrait?” Her eyes went to the painting in Kali’s hand, then to the door. “Put it back. Quickly. He mustn’t find it. He mustn’t find out about you.”

  “Me? What are you talking about?”

  Lillian lay back down
against the pillows. She gasped to catch her breath, unable to speak.

  Kali sat down on the edge of Lillian’s bed. For some reason, she remembered the morning of her thirteenth birthday, her mother perched on Kali’s bed, excited about the birthday present she was planning to bring home for Kali after school.

  “You painted over it, didn’t you?” Kali asked.

  Lillian nodded.

  “Why did you do that?”

  Her grandmother stared up at the ceiling fan above her bed.

  “I know my mom came here to get the painting the day she died.”

  Lillian started. “You know?”

  “She told me there was something she was going to give me for my birthday. Something that had inspired her.”

  “Inspired? That’s what she said? Inspired?” Lillian’s jaw trembled. She sat up and reached for the tiny painting, studied it for a moment, then brought it against her chest. “Dear God.”

  “Please. I need to understand what this painting meant to my mother. Tell me what happened.”

  Lillian lay back against the pillow, the painting clenched in her hand. “I’d hidden it away in the attic. I didn’t think she’d find it.”

  “But she did.”

  “Many years ago. When she was still in high school. Dorothy didn’t tell me she had, but I knew. She began making drawings with four-armed women. I was horrified when I saw them and tried to make her stop. When she wouldn’t, every time I found one of her drawings or paintings, I would throw it away.”

  Just as she’d done with Kali’s pictures.

  “Then,” Lillian said, “Dorothy started painting on the walls.”

  “And you painted over them.”

  Her grandmother nodded. “I locked the door to the storage rooms so she wouldn’t be able to get to it, but that didn’t help. The image was firmly in her mind.”

  “If you hated the painting so much, why didn’t you destroy it?”

  Lillian brought the painting close to her eyes. “My mother’s face. I couldn’t believe he had captured my mother’s face. It was all I had of her.”

  “But this is you in the picture. You when you were Leli Lenz.”

  She nodded.

  Kali’s voice quivered. “Whose baby is this?”

  “Not a real baby. One he imagined.”

  “Who? Who painted this, Lillian? Whose initials are these?”

  “Professor Altwulf.”

  ALT. Altwulf.

  “Who was Professor Altwulf?”

  “A gentle, older man with a goatee and spectacles. An art professor, he told me. He had some connections and helped me get into films.”

  “And he painted this?”

  “He used to take me to his studio. It was filled with paintings. And he was so kind, so generous. I let my heart go.”

  “You fell in love with this man?”

  “I was a young, naïve girl. My brother Joseph had brought me to Berlin, but then he disappeared one day and I had no one. No one but Wulfie.”

  “Wulfie?”

  “Professor Altwulf. I called him Wulfie. And I trusted him. Of course, I didn’t tell him the truth. My mother had warned me to tell no one.”

  “Truth about what?”

  “That I was really Ilse Strauss. That I was Jewish.”

  Ilse Strauss. A name Kali had never heard before. Her grand-mother’s true name, but Kali still didn’t know who this woman really was.

  Kali looked at the four arms shaped liked a swastika. How could Kali’s mother have found inspiration in this? And yet, if one didn’t associate the symbol with the hatred of the Holocaust, Kali’s artist’s eye could appreciate the beauty in the symmetry. And these were clearly arms, like the four arms of the goddess that Kali had been named after. Hadn’t Kali’s mother once tried to explain it to her? How symbols meant what you wanted them to. That the goddess Kali represented the best, most positive qualities—life and goodness and energy. That’s what her mother saw in the name, despite the death and destruction others tended to see.

  “I want to know about my mother. What you told her the day she died.”

  Lillian was looking at something on top of the chiffonier in the corner of the room. The photo of Kali’s grandfather. “I promised Harry I wouldn’t speak of it again.”

  “Please, Lillian. I need to know.”

  Her grandmother turned her faded blue eyes to Kali. Her face was gaunt, all angled bones and shadows. “Yes, you do.”

  A shiver ran down Kali’s spine.

  “Dorothy came to the house while I was out,” Lillian said. “I suppose she did so deliberately, so she could find the key.”

  “To the storage rooms?”

  Lillian nodded. She had let go of the painting and her arthritic fingers played with the edge of her blanket. The satin ribbing was frayed. “I was surprised to see Dorothy’s car in the driveway. She rarely came to visit. I brought the groceries into the kitchen, calling her name. I heard footsteps coming down the storage room staircase. At first I panicked. I thought he had found me. Found the painting. That he had Dorothy up in the storage rooms and was going to hurt her. I picked up a knife.”

  “Who did you think found you?”

  “Graeber.” Lillian took hold of Kali’s arm and dug her fingers in. “And now he’s back. That’s why you need to know this. He wants the painting and he wants you.”

  Kali eased her grandmother’s fingers off her arm. They left a red imprint. “But it wasn’t Graeber. It was my mother who was coming down from the storage rooms.”

  Lillian nodded. She’d brought her hand back to the blanket and her fingers pulled at the torn ribbing. “Dorothy was holding something. I could tell it was the painting.” Lillian’s features tensed and she looked like a furious young woman as she spoke. “Then Dorothy said, ‘What did you do to my painting?’”

  “Give that to me,” I said. “It isn’t yours.”

  Lillian began to sob. “She told me she wanted to give it to you as a present. And all I could think about was that I had to make Dorothy understand it was evil. That she couldn’t contaminate you as well. So I told her.”

  Kali felt her abdomen convulse. She held herself, trying to protect her baby. “Told her what?”

  But Lillian didn’t seem to hear Kali. “And, after I told her, something changed in her demeanor. Instead of the horror and outrage I was expecting, Dorothy became calm. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Well, I’d better put this away.’ And then Dorothy went back up to the storage room with the painting. When she came down, she locked the storage room door, and gave me the key.” Lillian shuddered. “I should have known something was wrong. She was too composed, but I was so relieved that the truth was finally out and that Dorothy seemed okay with it.”

  Kali’s heart was pounding in her ears. “What happened then?”

  “Dorothy went up to her bedroom.” Lillian ripped the edge of the blanket. “I suppose she had the painting with her and that’s when she hid it in her portrait, but I didn’t know that then. I never went back to check. Perhaps I should have.” She took a deep breath. “Dorothy left the house. I heard her car pulling out of the driveway. I still believed that everything was okay—but of course, it wasn’t.”

  Kali knew what happened next. Her mother’s car had crashed into a giant ficus tree a few blocks away. The car had been going over seventy miles an hour, according to the police. Her mother had died on impact, they said. Kali’s grandparents had told her it was an accident, but at some deeper level, Kali had known it couldn’t have been. Her mother had been a careful driver; she never would have driven so fast down the neighborhood street.

  “What did you tell her about the painting that upset her so much?” Kali asked.

  Lillian stared up at the ceiling fan.

  “What did you tell her?”

  Lillian wet her thin, dry lips with her tongue. “I told her who painted it.”

  Kali glanced at the reddish brown initials in the corner. ALT. The pounding in her ears go
t louder. “You said Professor Altwulf painted it.”

  Lillian closed her eyes.

  “Who was Altwulf?” Kali looked again at the initials in the corner of the painting again. Not ALT. The initials were AH. Her stomach did a flip-flop.

  “Who was Altwulf?” Kali asked, her voice sounding shrill and foreign to herself.

  “God forgive me,” Lillian said. “A disguise. He wore a disguise. I didn’t know. Not until that terrible day. His goatee came off and hung from his face. And then I saw.”

  “Who was he, Lillian?”

  “He was the devil.” She licked her lips. “Altwulf was Adolf Hitler.”

  Kali heard her grandmother speak, but the words seemed to be coming from the end of a wind tunnel.

  “And Hitler was . . . he was Dorothy’s real father.”

  A long, long wind tunnel.

  “Your real grandfather.”

  58

  Lillian heard the front door slam. She listened expectantly, caught in the déjà vu nightmare. A moment later, a car squealed out of the driveway.

  Just like Dorothy.

  But no. Dorothy had been unnaturally calm. Almost zombielike. Dorothy had pulled out of the driveway slowly, picking up speed as she went, as the reality of who she was hit her.

  And then she crashed the car into a tree.

  Please God, protect my granddaughter. Let his curse end now.

  She reached for a glass of water. Her lips and mouth were so dry. But the night table was wet with spilled water, the glass on the floor.

  Harry was watching her from the top of the chiffonier.

  “What choice did I have, Harry? I had to tell her. She had figured out too much. And I won’t be here forever. She needs to protect herself and her child from Graeber.”

  Lillian felt a slight weight through the blanket. Her fingertips touched the small rectangle. Kali had left the room without the painting.

  It had been in Leli’s purse when she fled his studio. Perhaps she should have destroyed it when she first realized she had it. But would that have changed anything?

  Would Dorothy still be alive? Lillian’s parents? The millions of Jews who were exterminated because of her?

  No. It wasn’t the painting that brought his wrath down on everyone who was tinged with her blood.