by Peter Albano
On the twenty-seventh day, Solomon LeVine was hit by a flame thrower. Running up Grzybowska Street toward the Tlamatzka Synagogue, he screamed, “Shoot me! Kill me!” Irving Bernstein thought for a fraction of a second then pulled the trigger and killed him with a short burst of six bullets. Then he hunched over the VZ-37, sobbing and pounding the hot barrel until blisters rose on his fist. He could hear Leja Gepner crying.
The next day, a sniper put a bullet through Leja’s head, splattering Irving with brains, blood, and bits of skull. Beyond grief, Irving cradled the corpse and rocked her back and forth as if consoling a tired child. Then Rachel was there, helping Irving lay the corpse aside and cover it with sheets of singed roofing paper. There was no time to bury the dead. Slowly, Bernstein returned to the machine gun and his sister grasped the ammunition belt.
Three days later, it was over. The Germans broke into the rear of the synagogue which was overflowing with hundreds of wounded and shot every one. Bernice ran screaming down the stairs with a burly SS sergeant on her heels. Shouting “Judin scheisse!” he drove his bayonet through her throat. Screaming with anger, horror and grief, Irving spun the gun around and fired his last rounds into the sergeant. Then there was the sounds of hobnailed jack-boots behind him and Irving Bernstein whirled in time to catch a rifle butt in the face.
The rocking motion, the clickety-clack of steel wheels on rails and a fresh breeze on his face brought Irving Bernstein back. He was on his back, head on Rachel’s lap in an open gondola car. His head was a base drum and someone was pounding it with a club. “Thank God,” he heard Rachel say.
“The gun — Warsaw…” he managed.
“All of the Hosmonaeans and ZOBs are dead except us. Two of the ‘Blues’ told the Germans you’re a doctor. They need you.”
Irving looked around the car. He was the only man. The rest of the passengers were young women and a few teenage boys. He raised himself up on an elbow. “And you, Rachel. They spared you?”
“Yes.”
“They need you.”
She looked away. “Yes.”
“For what?”
He heard moaning and wailing. A group of women were pointing. Then he heard it. “Auschwitz! Auschwitz!”
Fujita’s voice broke through. “Colonel. Enough, Colonel. Spare yourself.”
The memories rolled on, film spinning off an endless reel, the bright, clear pictures flashing in his brain. He rambled on as if the admiral did not exist, “The SS separated us into three groups: most for immediate gassing and burning, some, like myself, essential people with rare skills, and my sister and young boys as field whores for the troops and officers.” He stopped abruptly, saucer-like eyes moving to Fujita. “I’m sorry, Admiral. You said something?”
“Spare yourself, Colonel.”
Bernstein smiled, a sad little smile that trailed off the corners of his mouth. “Spare myself, Admiral? The guilty can never be spared.”
“Guilty?”
“Yes. I survived. I’m guilty.”
“Nonsense.”
“Do you know why I survived, Admiral?” The men exchanged a silent stare. “Because I was strong, worked hard for the Germans and I was very lucky.”
“Was your sister lucky?”
“No. She vanished, but I worked hard in their hospital.” He laughed, a cruel mirthless sound. “Hospital! It was a dying place. How do you treat starving people? I shaved heads — hair was needed as packing around pipes in U-boats — I pulled gold fillings from the dead, the barely alive. One corpse with a big hooked nose was my father…” He stumbled.
“Please…”
Bernstein waved off the objection, “Became a Sonderkommando — we stood in the corridors outside the gas chambers when the naked people trooped in for their showers. The SS actually issued soap – stone bars, of course, but the people thought they held soap. They crammed them in, twelve hundred at a time, and then the people knew, began to scream and moan. Children were thrown in on top, the iron doors were slammed shut and hermetically sealed. They dropped the acid — Zyklon B — in through the top. Twenty thousand a day were killed this way. Oh, those Germans were efficient-very efficient. In about fifteen minutes the pounding on the doors and screaming stopped. The gas was pumped out and we entered. They were always in a pile, a heap that peaked just under the ceiling.”
He moved his eyes over Fujita’s immobile face. “They tried to climb up…always up…to escape the gas. There was always excrement and menstrual blood splattered everywhere. Then we went to work with ropes and hooks to untangle them and load them on carts for shipment to the crematorium. After we hosed the chamber down and made it ready for the next batch.” His voice faded away and his head dropped, eyes focused on the table.
Fujita fingered the solitary hair hanging from his chin. “You still believe in God, Colonel?”
“I had my doubts at Auschwitz, true. But, yes, I believe. I am still a good Jew.”
“And the Germans are Christians — believe in God, the Judaic God, your God?
“True.”
“Then where was this God of yours?”
Bernstein dropped his head on clenched fists, mumbling into his knuckles, “He turned his back.”
Fujita pushed himself to his feet. There was command in his voice. “No more, Colonel. I cannot understand this crime — that would be impossible. But I know, now, from you. It is enough.”
Bernstein raised his head slowly. For the first time the gray-green of his eyes was heightened by moisture. “Yes,” he conceded. “It is enough.” he continued, new strength mounting in his voice. “But now you understand why Jews all over the world have said, ‘Never again.’? Why Israel reacts violently to any terrorist attacks on her own? Why we Israelis will fight like no other people have ever fought?”
“Yes. Yes. A samurai has no trouble with this.” The admiral sank back in his chair. “We samurai are painted as killers enamored by death and the picture is fairly accurate. But we are not murderers. We have humanity.” He drummed the oak with reed-like fingers. “You will attend the ceremonies in The Shrine of Infinite Salvation tomorrow?”
“I am a member of your staff, sir. Of course, I’ll be there.”
“I could excuse you.”
“Thank you, Admiral. Not necessary.”
“Good, we will behead the prisoners.”
Chapter Three
Located forward in a corner of the hangar deck, The Shrine of Infinite Salvation was a large square room of unpainted wood sheeting. A combination Buddhist shrine and Shinto temple, it boasted a gilded torii over the structure’s single entrance — a doorway flanked by a pair of exquisite sixteen-petaled Imperial chrysanthemums painstakingly brushed on the surface by expert calligraphers.
To reach Yonaga’s hangar deck, Brent Ross and Yoshi Matsuhara rode the ship’s crowded elevator down from “flag country”. “Like an express ride in the Empire State Building,” Brent had cracked to a solemn Matsuhara. Yoshi had been irritated and upset since the previous day’s staff meeting and nothing Brent did could break through the flyer’s mood.
The hangar deck was a place of wonder for Brent Ross. Brightly illuminated by rows of overhead lights, it was a thousand feet long and over two hundred feet at the beam — the largest single compartment ever sent to sea by man. As the two officers walked side by side toward the shrine, Brent saw over a 150 aircraft in rows, mechanics and aircrewmen in green overalls swarming over Aichi D3A1 dive bombers, Nakajima B5N2 torpedo bombers and Mitsubishi A6M2, Zero-sen, fighters. The young lieutenant’s ears were deluged by a cacophony of sounds found only in this metal cavern, the steel bulkheads and overheads reverberating with shouts, the bang and clatter of tools, the machine gun bursts of pneumatic drive drills, the grind of iron wheels as old-fashioned service carts and bowsers were dragged and pushed across the steel decks. “Look, Yoshi-san,” he said, tugging on Matsuhara’s sleeve and stabbing a finger at a score of fighters with engines removed. “They have them out, already.”
> “My orders,” the pilot acknowledged curtly. “We will have our new engines tomorrow” His voice softened, “Best aircraft mechanics, anywhere.”
“Without a doubt,” Brent agreed as the pair passed under the torii and entered the shrine.
The Shrine of Infinite Salvation was unlike any place of worship Brent Ross had ever seen. There was no big nave with recesses. In fact, there were no seats at all. Already, over a hundred officers dressed identically to Brent and Yoshi — dress blues, white gloves, and swords — were standing in ranks facing an altar attached to the starboard wall. Guarding the altar were two stone lion-dog statues at least three feet high, while arranged on the altar itself were priceless icons: statues of gods, animals and select kami, mirrors, tortoise-shell combs, golden swords, and two gold Buddhas — one from Yasakuni the other from Ise. A six-hundred-year-old painting of Emperor Goshirakawa surrounded by his entourage hung above the altar. Stacked on shelves on both sides of the painting were hundreds of white boxes filled with the ashes of the dead. Covered with ideograms, some contained the cremated remains of crewmen who had died during the four years of entrapment in Sano Wan, but most held the ashes of men killed fighting the Arabs. In the center of the room on a raised platform covered with a white satin sheet were 16 boxes filled with the ashes of the casualties whose bodies had been recovered after the air raid; the other seventeen were at the bottom of the bay. Admiral Fujita had not yet arrived.
Standing “at ease” next to Yoshi, Brent fingered the hilt of his sword restlessly. Not United States Navy issue, it was the fabled Konoye blade, a precious, jeweled weapon steeped in tradition. The day he earned it came back. Six months ago, eight-hundred miles northwest of the Hawaiian Islands. The tortured Lieutenant Nabutake Konoye’s rush to seppuku. Brent Ross selected; no, honored, as Konoye’s fcaishaku, standing to the side, sword raised over his right shoulder. Konoye’s steady hand pulling the razor sharp wakizashi across his abdomen. A torrent of blood spurting and pouring. Intestines snaking to the deck. The supplicant’s mouth slashed downward in his stone jaw, clenched white teeth gleaming in the harsh light. The wide eyes screaming with silent pain. The pitch forward. The exposed neck. His target: the knot of hair. Fujita’s shout of “Now!” The swing with every ounce of his power. The blade sang. He heard it. Not a hiss. Not a moan of steel parting air. But a musical hum of joy. The impact. The sound like a butcher’s cleaver striking a side of beef. Too high. The rolling head. Teeth. Lower jaw and severed tongue scattering. Then Brent vomited.
The shout of “Attention!” brought him back and silence descended like a wet blanket throughout the entire hangar deck as tools were laid aside and mechanics and crewmen crowded about the shrine. Preceded by a priest and his two acolyte attendants, Admiral Fujita entered. The entire staff followed. The admiral took a central position facing the platform and altar. Quickly the ranks formed and he was flanked by Commander Mitake Arai and Commander Hakuseki Katsube. Standing rigidly with their swords held at the exact parade ground angle were Lieutenant Commander Nobomitsu Atsumi, Lieutenant Daizo Saiki, Commander Tashio Okuma and Lieutenant Tatsuya Yoshida. Lieutenant Taku Ishikawa was not present. Appearing tired and depressed, Rear Admiral Mark Allen took his place next to Brent Ross without speaking a word. Colonel Bernstein, dressed in newly starched and pressed khakis, stood next to Matsuhara. He was the only man in the room without a sword. Everyone stood at rigid attention as the priest and his acolytes approached the altar.
The priest was a bent, shaven old man dressed in his best ecclesiastical finery; turquoise jumper and baggy pantaloons, black-lacquered shoes of pawlonia wood. Also shaven, the acolytes were dressed in short black robes, straw sandals and had broad coolie hats corded around their necks and hanging back over their shoulders. Around their necks hung cloth bags to carry alms; usually 50 yen coins or packets of boiled rice.
While the priest approached the altar, chanting and shouting, one assistant squatted and pounded a drum arrhythmically while the other walked about the shrine waving a silver canister filled with burning incense.
Brent managed to pick up a familiar phrase. “Kan Jizai Bosatsu, gyojin hannya hara mitta,” the priest chanted over and over.
“Buddha came into this world to search for truth,” Yoshi Matsuhara whispered into Brent’s ear.
“I know. I know,” Brent said. Brent had witnessed several Buddhist rites before — usually funerals. In the usual perplexing Japanese thinking, Shinto was reserved for happy occasions; most commonly, births and marriages. Brent knew the Buddhist last rites would be interminable and he steeled himself for a long afternoon. He was wrong.
Suddenly the drummer’s beat became faster and more rhythmic and the incense carrier laid aside his canister and began to play a flute. The ranks stiffened and eyes bulged as a beautiful young girl with long black tresses that hung to her waist entered. Dressed in a rich, red kimono decorated with golden herons and pulled in sharply at the waist by a white silk obi, she carried a baton jingling with a dozen silver bells. Fujita stiffened and Brent detected anger on the inscrutable face. The old man had only permitted one woman to board Yonaga; the Israeli intelligence officer, Sarah Aranson, and she was allowed on board only because she carried information vital to survival of the carrier.
“A mico,” Yoshi whispered. “Like a vestal virgin, to you. Her dance is called a kagura. It’s sacred. Should help our dead reach nirvana.”
“It’s going to help the admiral reach apoplexy,” Brent whispered back. For the first time in three days, Yoshi Matsuhara chuckled.
Moving sinuously, the girl began to dance to the music of the flute. With bent knees and hips undulating provocatively she moved about the shrine cat-like, twisting, thrusting her breasts, staring back, challenging the hundreds of hungry eyes.
“This is religious?” Brent managed.
“It’s our way,” was the whispered response.
The girl moved to Brent, stopped, caught his eyes with the warm depths of her own. She was aroused and Brent knew it. Perhaps it was the presence of hundreds of men in military uniforms. He felt a familiar warmth. She lingered too long. He felt heat on his cheeks and he had trouble swallowing. Every man in the room was staring at them. Finally, the priest shouted and the girl moved slowly to the door and out of the shrine. Brent felt relieved.
Fujita waved at the priest and the old man nodded back. A gesture to the acolytes and the trio exited, chanting, drumming and spewing incense. Another wave to a half-dozen ratings and the sixteen boxes were removed from the platform and stacked on the shelves. Then a large block covered with red satin was carried in and placed on the platform. Finally, a petty officer entered and placed a basket next to the block.
“Christ,” Brent heard Mark Allen whisper. “He’s really going to do it. Murder. That’s all it is. Murder.”
“What about retribution?” Brent asked.
“You are getting as blood thirsty as they are,” the admiral spat back.
“Ask a Jew about that,” Colonel Bernstein said suddenly, his voice loud enough to turn a score of heads.
Allen was not finished, “You want murder, Irving?”
“An eye for an eye, Admiral.”
A commotion at the entrance silenced the two men. Cuffed and wearing ankle irons, the three prisoners were dragged through the door by burly seaman. Ta-kauji Harima and Salim al Hoss both appeared paralyzed by fear and had to be pulled across the deck to Admiral Fujita, their ankle chains clinking. However, Kenneth Rosencrance shrugged off his guards, walking erectly in short, jingling steps to confront Admiral Fujita with a defiant stare. Harima and Hoss were punched to attention.
“You are guilty of murder,” Fujita said bluntly.
“We didn’t have a tried,” Rosencrance retorted.
Fujita gestured at the sixteen boxes. “Did you give them one?”
Rosencrance bit his lip. “Do your damnedest.”
A nod from Fujita and two guards wrenched Salim al Hoss across the deck and up onto the pl
atform. A sudden movement by Bernstein caught Brent’s eye. The Israeli had placed a skullcap on the peak of his head. “It’s a yarmulka,” the colonel explained. “I’m orthodox. We wear them to funerals.”
“Mercy in the name of Allah,” the Arab cried from his knees, wringing his hands. “Islam teaches mercy. Why don’t you show some?”
“‘Seize him and bind him in a seventy-cubit chain, then burn him in the fire’,” Fujita said in a monotone.
Stunned, Hoss stared at the admiral. “You’re quoting the Koran.”
“Of course. Your book has told me what is to be done with you.” Fujita gestured and two things happened: the guards pulled the Arab down across the block so that his head projected over the basket and an old chief petty officer carrying a sword creaked forward.
Immediately, Commander Tashiro Okuma stepped from the group. Shouting, “Admiral, please, allow me,” he pulled his great sword from its scabbard with a ringing of finely tempered steel.
“This dog does not deserve the honor of death at the hands of an officer.”
“I know, sir. But I am the strongest man on the ship.” Tashiro Okuma gave Brent Ross a scathing look. “I can do it for you cleanly.” He pointed at Salim al Hoss. “Killing this vermin should not injure my karma any more than stepping on a cockroach.” He thumbed the edge of his blade, “Anyway, sir, I just sharpened it and I would like to test the edge.”
Brent heard Admiral Mark Allen whisper in a voice heavy with sarcasm, “You’re good at it, Brent. Made ‘All Japan’ with Konoye. Why don’t you and the commander flip a coin for slasher rights?”
Angrily, Brent countered, “Admiral, you don’t have the right…” He was halted by Admiral Fujita’s voice.
“Spoken like a samurai, Commander Okuma. You may proceed.” Okuma stepped up on the platform, brandishing the sword.