After some more vigorous manipulation, Kersten withdrew his fingers and dropped his arms. His whole body slackened like that of an athlete after a particularly strenuous race.
“How do you feel, Herr Reichsführer?”
“Wunderbar, Doctor, I feel...yes, it’s truly amazing...I haven’t felt this good since I was a youngster.”
“You can get up now, Herr Reichsführer.”
Himmler raised his slight body very slowly, carefully, as if in a slow-motion scene in a moving picture. It was as though he might negate the treatment if he rose too rapidly. He fixed Kersten with a look which, behind the lenses of his round spectacles, revealed a kind of bewilderment.
“Am I dreaming, Doctor? Is it possible? The pain is gone... completely gone.”
“It is for now, Herr Reichsführer. But I warn you that it will most likely return once you are stressed again and the pressures of your life and work return.”
“This technique of massage of yours, it’s rather unique, isn’t it? I see you received excellent training at our esteemed university here in Berlin,” Himmler said.
“You’re correct, Herr Reichsführer.”
“Our German professors are the best in the world.”
“They’re very learned, to be sure. But this technique you experienced today; it wasn’t taught to me by a German professor.”
“No, not a German?”
“No, rather by a Tibetan from China, a Doctor Ko.” It gave Kersten pleasure to give an answer that undoubtedly would not please Himmler.
“Doctor, you mean to tell me that you treated me according to some inferior, primitive practice developed by those slant-eyed underlings?”
“But you did tell me, didn’t you, that you felt absolutely fine after the treatment?” Kersten asked, more in the mild form of a declaration of triumph than an actual question. “Funny, what these ‘inferior, primitive practices’ can accomplish, isn’t it?”
Himmler seemed at a loss for words. Kersten felt he had scored contract points in a game of bridge.
Himmler rose from the divan on which he had been seated and came over to Kersten.
“You realize that I will now need to keep you near me, Doctor.” Now that he had been relieved of his acute pain, the puny, half-naked man, still holding up his trousers with his left hand, had recovered his accustomed sense of glorious omnipotence.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Herr Reichsführer,” Kersten did not hesitate to say. “Did Herr Diehn not tell you that I agreed to perform one treatment, and only one?”
“I confess that he did. But I am sure that you are a reasonable man, Doctor, open to negotiation.”
“I am fully occupied in the service of Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch royal family in The Hague.”
“Mein Gott, Kersten, doesn’t a leader of the German people have priority over the queen of a tiny, irrelevant country like Holland? Besides, she won’t be queen much longer, let me assure you, Doctor.”
Kersten didn’t know what Himmler was referring to. He felt a flash of anger at this further display of nationalistic arrogance and supposed clairvoyance.
“I have a home in Holland now. I am contemplating marriage.”
“Well, allow me to express my congratulations. To a sweet Finnish blonde? Or a Dutch lady who thinks wooden shoes are the epitome of high fashion?”
Kersten was becoming more and more certain that he would not be able to tolerate being this man’s personal masseur.
“Neither, actually. To a young Silesian woman who is working in The Hague, in fact.” He said this, aware that he was playing into Himmler’s ethnic bias.
“I trust that it is a German woman from Silesia, Kersten, not one of those dirty Polacks or Slavs in the Silesian countryside with pig shit stuck to the soles of their shoes...But I think you will find, Doctor, that marriage is a highly overrated institution. Besides, I happen to think every red-blooded German man should have a mistress, to produce new pure Aryan children. We can find someone suitable for you, if you like.”
Kersten had heard the rumors that Himmler had a mistress, not at all a secret even to his wife, who was seven years his senior. Kersten knew he wouldn’t have time or energy for another woman, even if he were so inclined.
“That won’t be necessary, Herr Reichsführer.”
“Well, then, I have other ways to make sure you come back...or better yet, remain in Berlin,” Himmler continued with more than a hint of threat. “I would hope, though, not to have to resort to such means with an intelligent, skilled man like yourself.”
Kersten felt trapped. He was frustrated, but felt he could not reveal his frustration to a man who, he had to acknowledge, might now hold the power of life or death over him.
“I’d rather not revert to such unsubtle ways to make you stay. Believe me, I do not wish to cause you harm of any kind. You are too valuable to me, and hence the Reich. I would much rather appeal to your loyalty to the Hippocratic Oath that you will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures that are required.”
Kersten felt the familiar, occasional acute spasm of pain in his own stomach again, and the recognizable nausea that always accompanies it. Perspiration began to gather on his forehead and underneath his arms.
Kersten sought to hide his anxiety. He tried another tack. Could a dose of humor have any effect on this singularly dutiful man?
“What would your Führer say if he knew you had a personal doctor who is not a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or even a German, for that matter, but a Finnish citizen?”
Himmler looked like a man who had seldom heard anyone refuse him. After a while, fearing perhaps that he had been too insistent, Kersten back-pedaled.
“But should you have acute need of me, I suppose can request Queen Wilhelmina to permit me to return temporarily to Berlin with just a day’s notice. I can’t guarantee that she would be accommodating to your request, though.”
Kersten regretted his words as soon as they hovered in the air between him and Himmler.
“You’ll be hearing from me, Doctor,” Himmler said curtly. “You can be sure of that...No matter what the trifling tulip-loving queen says.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Berlin: December 15, 1938
In the weeks since seeing Hannah off at the HauptBahnhof, Algot Niska had been thrust into an uncharacteristic condition of lassitude. It took him several days to make contact with even one of his contacts in Berlin.
His inactivity surprised him. He had always prided himself on his work ethic, his ability to overlook distractions and to get things accomplished. Part of it, he acknowledged reluctantly to himself, was that now, over fifty, neither his body or spirit could accomplish what he had at the beginning.
He was not particularly a man prone to reflection. But the encounter with Hannah the previous month, and the violence that he had witnessed on the streets of Berlin a few weeks prior to that, the burning of the synagogue, and the overheated hatred of the crowd, had set him on an atypical course of rumination. So, too, had the vehemence of his own visceral reaction to those events. He couldn’t remember ever reacting so emotionally to something.
In the past, even at the news of the death of his father in the Finnish civil war, his emotions would skim over the surface of the water like the flat stones he used to skip as a boy over the waves of Lake Ladoga near his Karelian childhood home.
It occurred to him once or twice that perhaps he was a little bit in love with Hannah. Then he quickly chased the thought from his mind and wondered how he could think such a thing.
The image in his mind of Hannah boarding the train alone to an unknown fate continued to haunt him day and night. So did her sordid account of her days as a sex slave. Neither had he been able to expunge from his mind the dreadful memory of the flaming stained-glass window crushing to death the rabbi and his wife.
Having been in his early teens when the Great War broke out in 1914, Niska didn’t have first-hand experiential kn
owledge of the acts of cruelty men of warring sides were capable of inflicting on one another. His knowledge of them was strictly from schoolbooks and second-hand testimony of older drinking companions who had lived through them. However, he was almost twenty when Finland declared its independence from Czarist Russia in 1917. In the ensuing bloodletting between the conservative Whites and the Reds with their Bolshevik leanings, in which his father was knifed to death, he had witnessed what viciousness and vindictiveness citizens of even the same newly formed nation could perpetrate on one another. So Niska was not especially surprised by the intensity of the mob’s hatred and violence that night. What he couldn’t quite comprehend why it was on defenseless Jews that they had chosen to inflict their violence.
But that evening had been the first time that he had had a ringside seat to such irrational pugilism. He was quite surprised by how deeply it had affected his spirit.
Then there was that befuddlingly unfamiliar beckoning toward something more righteous and noble that he felt stirring within him in the midst of the brutality. It was such a novel experience for him that he spent many hours lying on his bed trying to make sense of it.
He was in that very supine position on his bed one late afternoon when the telephone rang. The voice on the other end of the line was that of Mr. Bruno Altmann sounding more fretful and anxious than Niska was accustomed to.
“Herr Niska, can we meet at the usual place at 21:00? I’ve got another item of interest for you.” Altmann spoke in his native German. German was one of the four languages in which Niska, despite having had only a brief and scanty foreign education, was fluent.
Altmann and Niska always spoke in code in case either Altmann’s or Niska’s phone was being tapped by the SS. The “usual” place was the Kakadu Cabaret on Joachimstaler Strasse. The “item” was another allotment of personal property and goods that Altmann wanted Niska to smuggle out of Germany to relatives beyond the reach of the Third Reich.
Niska agreed to meet Altmann. As he dressed to leave his flat, he welcomed the familiar, delicious taste of intrigue.
At the door of the Kakadu, Niska was greeted by a familiar, smiling hostess, Paula, clad in a black silk top and a short-hemmed skirt accessorized by black net stockings.
“Your usual table, Herr Niska?”
“Ah, you know my needs perfectly, Paula. Yes.” He gave her a wink of his right eye.
She led Niska through a forest of round tables covered with white table cloths and surrounded by patrons in formal attire. Niska had an evening suit for just this purpose. Niska sat on the chair she offered. She offered him an Eckstein cigarette and held out a lighter so that he could light it. He smiled and passed a crisp bank note into the palm of her hand, told her that his guest for this evening would be a certain business associate, Herr Altmann, and thanked her as she left.
His usual table was near the stage. A small, very traditionally German-looking band was on the stage. Niska didn’t particularly care for the new menu of German folk music that had become a staple at Kakadu and other cabarets since 1933. He thought the unvarnished celebration of Germanic identity in the music bordered on jingoism. Jazz had had a monopoly on music in the cabarets in the previous frivolous decade and the early part of the current one. Things changed with the accession of Hitler to Chancellor when jazz was discouraged and eventually banned as a subversive non-Aryan influence.
He returned the smile of several female patrons at nearby tables as he sat at the table waiting for Altmann. He scanned the other tables in his vicinity for men whose evening suits looked too new to have been worn very often, or whose eyes, like his, were surveying the other tables. These were sure indications of undercover SS men. He was relieved not to have spied any potential candidates this evening, although he knew that they frequented the Kakadu just about every night. Before the evening was through there would undoubtedly be Wehrmacht officers around a few tables with their wives or mistresses. The SS would be watching them, too.
Niska glanced up into the many balconies that overlooked the dinner and dance floor, knowing that the SS were often to be found there, where they could get an unobstructed view below.
Altmann was led to the table by Paula herself. He handed her a new-looking bank note for her service. Whether or not Paula reckoned Altmann was a Jew, she gave no indication. A Jewish tip was as valuable as a gentile tip.
The two men shook hands and took their seats.
“Two cognacs, please, Paula,” Niska ordered.
Altmann surveyed the Kakadu anxiously.
“It looks pretty clear tonight, Bruno,” Niska reported. “Those Wehrmacht jokers at the tables over there are too intent on having a good time and too dullened by Schnapps already to take note of who might be in their surroundings. We’re okay.”
Niska thought Altmann’s face looked more distressed than usual, nonetheless. He remembered the note of urgency in his voice on the telephone. When the band stopped playing for a short break, and they knew they could be overheard from nearby tables, the men exchanged the normal mundane pleasantries of small talk about the weather and plans for the coming holiday.
After about a quarter hour, the band struck up a particularly energetic polka. Couples got up to dance, and as they did, the volume of the giddiness in the room increased to the point where Niska and Altmann could get down to the purpose of the meeting without the potential for being overheard.
Altmann began barely above a whisper. “I’ve put some papers and a few small items—jewelry mostly—in a safe deposit box in the Jacquier and Securius Bank in the Red Castle. I have informed my nephew in New York through a gentile courier to expect them soon.”
“And you want me to retrieve them and smuggle them out of Germany?” Niska looked at Altmann through eyes that had been rendered as narrow slits on his face by years of squinting at the reflection of the sun against the water.
“That’s right. On your next trip to Amsterdam or Copenhagen perhaps?”
“But I would need to liquidate the jewelry and wire cash to your nephew.”
Again, the band paused between numbers. Niska and Altmann altered their conversation seamlessly to a back-and-forth about a recent match of two soccer teams in the Gauliga. Once the music started again, the men resumed their transaction.
“Yes, that’s right,” Altmann said. “I know you have a certain knack for that kind of thing. The jewelry should fetch the equivalent of almost 19,000 Reichsmarks by my amateurish reckoning. Just take your own percentage off the top and wire the balance to my nephew.”
“You’re going to allow me to name my own price?”
“Your own Finnish government considers you a scoundrel, Mr. Niska, but one that I have found I can trust to be fair. Isn’t that why you’re known as ‘The Gentleman Smuggler’?”
Niska smiled faintly. The smile enhanced the deep lines and cracks that a life on the sea had burrowed into his face.
“And, before I forget, here’s the key for the box. God, I’m so glad to get my shit out of the Jacquier Bank now that it’s been taken over by Gentiles.”
Altmann checked around to make sure people at tables nearby were suitably immersed in their boozy conversation, then handed the key to Niska underneath the table. The two men held up their cognac glasses as a gesture of sealing the deal.
Niska looked earnestly at Altmann through the smoke rising from the tip of his cigarette.
“I’ve accepted your commission, Bruno, but I still detect a look of concern on your face.”
“How could there not be concern? It’s been a difficult five years. Hitler and his thugs squeeze the vice on us Jews tighter with each passing day. I wonder if the synagogue’s burning and destruction of Jewish businesses last month are the climax for which Hitler has been lusting. Or is it just another nail in the Jewish coffin in Germany, with much more to follow?”
“It was a disgusting, stomach-turning series of events I witnessed that night,” Kersten agreed.
The men were silent for a
while. Then Altmann raised his head and looked at Niska with the look of someone who had more to request than just the smuggling out of the country of some cash and jewelry. He leaned forward over the table so that his face was just centimeters away from Niska’s.
“You, Niska, are a bold man. You could accomplish so much more in Germany than smuggling Jewish property out of the country.”
Altmann held up the palms of his hands.
“Not that I don’t appreciate your doing that, of course. Don’t get me wrong. But quietly and secretively in our little confabs in our flats and at temple, a lot of us are talking about our desire to escape what Hitler is making into a pig sty. And you know how we Jews feel about pigs.”
The recurring scene of the rabbi and his wife being crushed and incinerated underneath the fallen window frame flashed through Niska’s mind once again.
“We can’t just get up and leave, of course. The Nazis hate us. To them, we Jews are spies, criminal, psychopaths, and enemies of the people. You know the drill. But still, they won’t let us leave the country. Of course, they don’t want us to take our property and wealth with us, nor our testimonials of all that is really going on within German boundaries.”
Niska took another puff of his cigarette. He nodded to indicate he was ready to hear more.
Altmann slammed his fist on the table. Kersten was startled. Patrons at the next table ceased their laughter and conversation momentarily and looked over at the two men. Only the tables of the Wehrmacht officers and their companions continued their merrymaking uninterrupted.
“Damn it, something’s got to be done!” Altmann insisted. Peering straight into Niska’s eyes, he added, “And by God, something can be done!”
The neon light from the advertising outside shone through the curtain, giving Altmann’s livid face an even redder glow.
“I’m too old to try to leave and start life all over somewhere else. But there are others I know, Herr Niska—some of them very wealthy, by the way—who would be eager to compensate a resourceful person generously who could devise a way to help them escape.”
Accidental Saviors Page 5