A Kind of Woman

by Helen Burko

  Jacob would never forget how angry she was because he didn’t want to have sexual relations with her.

  *****

  Jacob lay on the sofa with his eyes closed and recalled the scene with Natasha. The scene then changed to one with Rachel. No! No! Mathilda Krause! And after Rachel-Mathilda, all kinds of characters whom he once defended in court.

  He remembered one especially…a young gangster of seventeen, Jock Milton. He could still see his young, delicate face, like the face of a child. His parents were rich, and Jacob could not stop asking himself what caused Jock to rob one of the largest New York banks in broad daylight.

  The prosecutor maintained Jock was a danger to society and the only cure for him was the electric chair. Maybe that would be a lesson to others like him.

  Jacob finally thought he found some of the reasons that turned this young man into a gangster. It was the influence of his parents and his friends and his environment.

  The young Jock had been witness to many fights between his parents, in which they accused each other, justly so, of betrayal; and in spite of the abundance of money, there was chaos in that family, and the young Jock was influenced by it. He also heard and saw his father’s deceits and thievery in his work that seemed to increase after his father became rich.

  After Jock came many others: prostitutes, petty criminals, and hardened criminals.

  *****

  The silence in the room became oppressive. The silence was like the wind in the smoky chimney in his poor hut in Russia where he lived after he was released from the camp.

  It was late at night, but Jacob paced around the rooms from time to time as he used to do in his prison cell, where he was imprisoned before they passed sentence on him and sent him to the camp.

  He went from room to room and then walked into the bedroom. So many memories raced through his mind. In this bed he had shared his life first with Doris, and then, not long ago, with her.

  He chased away thoughts of her and went to one of the drawers and took out a picture of Doris that had been stored between some albums. He blew the dust off and looked at it for a long time.

  She seemed to come alive. Her figure was so regal and lovely, her face smiling with all her feminine charm.

  She seemed to want to tell him something…

  He felt uneasy, like a man who has come to the police to admit a crime. The silence around him choked him. He began to look through the old dusty albums. He found pictures of himself together with the little Lillian. The child in the picture was so cheerful and innocent, he couldn’t bear to look at the pictures anymore. He returned them to the drawer and locked it.

  He knew he was again alone and abandoned. He drank another glass of whiskey and returned to lie on the sofa. He asked himself, not for the first time since his decision to defend Mathilda, if he was justified in making that decision, if he was right not to retract his decision, and most important, if he had the right to hurt feelings of the former inmates and profane the memory of millions of victims. Did he have the right to defend this woman who had served Satan and had aided, directly or indirectly, Nazism to sink its beastly claws into innocent people?

  When he reflected on this and weighed it in his mind, he again came to the same conclusion that not just defending her was his object, but through this trial, to accuse the world!

  *****

  During his last visit to Mathilda, when he announced he was going to defend her, she threw her arms around his neck and burst into tears.

  “Oh, my dear,” she whispered, “I never knew how good you were…how good!”

  He lightly pushed her aside and listened to her words halfheartedly and was also indifferent to her tears.

  She continued. “Believe me, my dear, I am telling you the truth. If that woman had not recognized me, I would have told you about myself. But I’m not to blame. No, I’m not to blame. I told you the truth about myself. I never harmed anyone. I’m not to blame!

  “Once, when you questioned me about my past, I promised you I would tell you everything… But I postponed it for another time…another opportunity. I didn’t want to surprise you, but now the surprise is so much worse.”

  “I understand you,” Jacob told her.

  She looked at him with her eyes full of tears, and she threw her arms around his neck again, sobbing.

  “Are you truly saying that, my dear? Or maybe you’re just making fun of me and my tragedy?”

  “No, I wouldn’t make fun of your tragedy!” he said seriously. “No person’s tragedy makes me cry or makes me laugh. I don’t like crocodile tears or laughter at another person’s expense. Since the first day I began to defend criminals, I began to examine, in depth, without knowing why, the reasons for their crimes. That’s why I told you what I told you—that I understand you. I’ll say that in my closing statement, although as I told you, the chances of winning this trial are very small. The law doesn’t know pity, and this time this is, I’m sorry to say, a sentimental matter.”

  He lit a cigarette, inhaled the smoke, and continued. “You don’t know what feelings mean, just as your people who carried out all these atrocities didn’t know or don’t know what feelings are. Feelings can contort meanings. Feelings are the basis of the law, although they were created by the mind and the intellect and human logic.”

  Again he paused and smoked his cigarette and then continued as if speaking to himself. “I know that feelings and emotions will play an important part in this trial, as will the need to take into account the feelings and opinions of a society that looks for satisfaction. Even if I lose this trial, it will have been worthwhile,” he said quietly and pensively, “because my words will be written down in the protocol and will be, maybe, of some use to future students and researchers of criminology, but they must contain the truth about you, and only the truth, do you hear?”

  She looked at him and sobbed. She didn’t understand much of what he said and didn’t dare to ask questions.

  The warden came and took her back to her cell.

  *****

  The first light of dawn brightened the windows before Jacob finally fell into a sleep filled with nightmares and anxiety.

  Lately, he had avoided meeting his friends and even his parents. In all the chance meetings with them, he appeared resolute and confident, and he refrained from talking about the trial that was to begin on the twenty-first of September, a date that was fast approaching.

  His parents noticed he evaded conversation about the trial, and therefore, they ceased inquiring about it or trying to persuade him to drop it. They knew it was useless, and though they felt his sorrow and his distraction, they understood it was caused by the fact his wife had suddenly been revealed as a criminal and this had depressed him greatly. His friends also understood and didn’t bring up the subject of the trial.

  When the trial date came closer, Jacob again received threatening letters from different sources but especially from the former inmates of concentrations camps.

  The letters were full of contempt for him. In a corner of a page in one of the letters, a swastika was drawn. There were also drawings of a gallows with a prisoner hanging on it or a Nazi shooting helpless women, old people, and children. One of the letters had a picture of a naked man stroking a snake while the snake was biting him and shooting its venom into the blood of the naked man.

  *****

  Three days before the trial, Jacob went to visit Mathilda again. When she saw him, she again embraced him and sobbed. This time she looked completely broken in spirit and greeted him as though she never expected to see him again.

  “What are they going to do to me?” she asked dejectedly. “I want to live…not stay in a prison. So many visions torture me. I would like them to send me away from America. That’s possible according to American law, isn’t it? That would be so wonderful. After a while, you could come to me, and we could live together happily. I swear I would be devoted and loyal to you. Life has taught me a lesson. These are thoughts that hav
e been passing through my mind while I’m here! I have such deep regrets, and they cause me such pain! Today I know he is to blame for everything…only him!”

  Jacob saw how she was trying to seduce him, and he remained silent. He had the impression her words were not what she was really feeling. She meant to continue to deceive him. Well, it was all the same to him. He wasn’t even interested enough to tell her he saw through her more than ever.

  One thing was clear to him: She wasn’t the same proud and courageous woman who jumped from the window of the moving train. Now she stood before him, miserable and frightened. She didn’t want to die! She didn’t want to stay in prison! He wondered how she could have been a successful spy. Now she impressed him as a wretched and pathetic woman who was once proud, forceful, and conceited until her deceit was uncovered.

  After she told him, at great length, of all her suffering, she smiled bitterly and said, “Well, that’s life! Intellectuals say that suffering cleanses a person. Maybe they’re right in a way.”

  He rose and prepared to leave. She gazed at him with a pleading look in her eyes. Only when he left did he ask himself why he had gone to visit her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The twenty-first of September.

  Now the excitement and interest were even stronger than at the preliminary hearing. Crowds of curious people came from different countries and different professions, among them a great number of lawyers, lawmakers, photographers, members of the press, and representatives of the foreign press.

  The police guard was increased, and they encircled the building. They held back the crowds that wanted to enter. The courtroom was too small to hold all the people that wanted not only to see Mathilda, but to be present at the trial and, most importantly, to see her husband, the lawyer, Jacob Barder, and hear what he would have to say in her defense. He was madly in love with her according to the newspapers.

  The press, which reported every move of this sensational trial in large headlines, announced that in this courtroom there would unfold a dramatic struggle between the prosecution and the defense around the central subject of Nazism and its results.

  This supposition was found to be true when Claude Alrist, the prosecutor, called a press conference and announced he was going to convince the judge and jury that Mathilda Krause deserved to die in the electric chair or in the gas chamber because not only was she one of those who had committed those heinous acts on innocent people, but Nazism in general was the greatest expression of destruction in this miserable generation—a fact everyone except the German people recognize. He would prove the German nation was to blame, that it gave birth to a snake that spread its poison over millions of people, and that’s why the punishment of these snakes in human form had to be unusually and especially severe.

  Jacob came to the trial in his usual dark suit and a dark red tie, a grim expression on his face and the mark of sleepless nights around his eyes. When he came to the table reserved for the defense, all eyes were on him, like on a contender who was making a fool of himself by entering a contest he couldn’t win. They wondered at his daring to compete when he knew he had to lose.

  The prosecutor arrived with his assistant, George Devoe, a few minutes after Jacob. Claude was dressed in an elegant blue suit and looked full of confidence, but his eyes had a somewhat anxious look. He gave the impression of an athlete impatient to start the game because he was so confident he would win. His assistant came to the court dressed more elegantly than usual and looked carefree and cheerful, as if he were about to attend a theater performance. He carried a number of files, which he placed on the table. Jacob brought no files or books with him.

  When Mathilda was brought in, a murmur passed through the crowd. Her face was calm but pale. The circles under her eyes had disappeared, and her eyes were again as blue as the sky in springtime. She bore no signs of fatigue or depression as she had in the first days of her imprisonment.

  The two policemen brought her to Jacob’s table, and she smiled at him faintly and sat down next to him. The photographers immediately tried to catch her smile and also the grim, cold look on Jacob’s face that didn’t change in answer to her smile.

  Again, a murmur passed through the crowd in the courtroom. People began to whisper to each other and tried to guess Jacob’s feelings for his wife. Had his feelings for her changed? Maybe now he was going to reverse his decision to defend her.

  “Will the court please rise!” the bailiff called out, and all the spectators rose when the judge, Carl Witner, made his entrance dressed in his black robe.

  He glanced at the packed courtroom as he sank slowly into his padded chair. The whispers ceased, but the photographers continued to take pictures until the bailiff called, “The court will come to order!” Then all activity stopped, and everyone sat down.

  The press sat with pens ready to write every word. Some of them had already written something hurriedly in their notebooks; America would hungrily read tomorrow what they had written.

  *****

  The choosing of the jury had taken over a week. Jacob insisted that there should be no former inmates of concentration camps among the jury because he maintained they couldn’t be free from prejudice. He also disqualified all the women as well as all the men who had a disabled veteran in their family or who were orphaned by it. Finally, they were left with an all-male jury.

  Jacob explained his choices with the statement that he wanted them to judge with their intellect and not with their emotions, which, in his opinion, might contort the evidence.

  One of the questions he put to the candidates was, “How would you act toward a German if you knew he had killed a brother or your father or your mother or a relative?”

  It was easy to guess what the answer would be.

  “I would do to him what he had done to them!”

  That answer was enough to disqualify the potential juror.

  One man answered, “With a bastard like that, I wouldn’t play around. No hesitation, no tricks. ‘You killed my father, huh?’ That would be enough for me to hang him with his head down and his feet up!”

  A few people in the courtroom laughed.

  Only those who thought logically and maturely could be taken. It wasn’t easy, and Jacob had to struggle hard to find twelve people who, more or less, were acceptable to him.

  The trial began, and Jacob announced he would omit his opening statement and the prosecution could begin.

  The first witness to be called was Hannah Rubin.

  She entered, gray haired and pale, looking serious and thoughtful. She had a fine film of powder on her face, and her straight nose, flashing eyes, and height gave her the appearance of a Roman matron and not, as she was described in the newspapers, a goddess of revenge.

  As she went up to the witness box, it was clear she was struggling to keep calm. She was sworn in, and she sat down.

  The first round of questions was delivered by Claude’s assistant, George Devoe.

  She gave her name, address, and profession.

  “Tell the court, please, how long you have been in America.”

  “A little more than a year.”

  “And where did you come from?”

  “From Poland.”

  “Where were you during the war?”

  “In Majdanek.”

  “Do you recognize this woman?” He pointed to Mathilda.

  “I’m sorry to say I do recognize her… That criminal…”

  The judge explained to the witness that she mustn’t use the word “criminal.” She could only say “the accused,” for according to the law, even a real criminal is not called that until he is proven guilty by a court of law.

  “The poor accused!” said Hannah in a serious tone, but the spectators burst out laughing. The pounding of the gavel brought back order and silence.

  The court clerk wrote in the protocol that the witness was not permitted to use the word “criminal.” The newsmen, however, recorded it as the first object of amusement
in the trial.

  The amusement increased when, in answer to the question of whether she was sure she recognized the accused, Hannah answered, “Even if she were disguised as a Jewish woman, I would recognize her.”

  The judge pounded his gavel again and warned the witness to avoid using derogatory expressions when talking about the accused.

  “God in heaven! We can’t say one word against her! It’s as though I am the accused! Would one of them, even the best of them, relate to a prisoner as you are relating to a criminal with the mark of Cain on her forehead?”

  “This is a democratic government! We have no dictator!” retorted the judge with a smile. The witness wanted to say something more, but the judge turned to the prosecutor. “Continue with the interrogation!”

  George and Claude exchanged glances, and Claude looked at Jacob, who was still smiling, but his smile resembled more a painful grimace.

  “Please, Mrs. Rubin, tell us of the circumstances of your meeting with the accused.” George turned again to the witness and said the word “accused” in a contemptuous tone.

  The spectators smiled, and all eyes were on the witness. All at once, their faces turned grim. What would the witness say?

  In the courtroom, there was a deathly silence. Everyone was listening intently. Jacob watched Hannah’s mouth; her lips trembled. Mathilda looked frozen; her face was like the Sphinx. She glanced at Jacob, but he paid no attention to her, even evaded her glances.

  Hannah took a deep breath and smoothed her hair with both her hands. This was a habit from the school days when she was a teacher and wanted to concentrate. She would also do this when she was a student, before a test or when she wanted to remember something. Lately she did this when she was sure of what she knew and what she was going to say. Her face was tense, and her hands formed two hard fists.

  “I was in Majdanek.” Her deep, melodic voice became hoarse. “Yes, I was in Majdanek. I worked in Field Five. That was a special area for only women. We were digging holes, moving planks, and doing other such heavy work. It wasn’t real work; it was work to torture the prisoners. This was done by orders of the SS men and women.