He checked the street in all directions one final time, and left the cover of the streetcar. He moved toward Usergasse, careful to stay in the deepening shadows that blanketed one eerily quiet street after another. Prague was silent, yet watchful, a lion resting with one eye open. Bodies littered street corners, some still grasping weapons, others in contorted piles that spoke of a cursory effort at gathering them together for removal.
He climbed quietly over a barrier comprised of an overturned wagon and several charred couches, and checked his watch: nearly 8:00 p.m.
The Sturmfuhrer—second lieutenant—left in charge of number 13 Usergasse was dead, shot by a Czech sniper. Hans Guenther quickly discovered this when the jittery sergeant major now in charge nearly shot him, unconvinced of his true identity despite his knowledge of both the correct daily password and the sergeant major’s name. A tense few minutes passed before he managed to approach the sandbagged position.
The building, thankfully, remained secure and undamaged. The sergeant major reported that the staff was still at work in the sub-basement.
Hans Guenther relieved the garrison, helping himself to the dead officer’s sidearm, which the sergeant major relinquished with some reluctance. He wished them good luck, and descended the dark staircase to the polished metal door on which the unit insignia had been engraved. He paused at the top of the long staircase that curved down and out of sight, and drew a deep breath of the familiar scented air.
It had taken him three days of hell. He had lost his brother, the one thing he’d promised Mama would never happen. His country teetered on the verge of collapse, and he was on the verge of betraying beliefs that had guided him for nearly half his life. He would also likely be a wanted man very soon, but he was here now, he would make it right.
He had made it back to Galerie.
Prague, June 1992
Vanesa opened her eyes, her head again resting on the coolness of the marble floor. Had she fainted? Been drugged again? She couldn’t tell. She raised her head and tried to shake away the dizziness as the blood rushed to her lower body, and looked around—still in the puddle of light, still surrounded by blackness.
Jonas was nowhere to be seen, nor was there any sign of him, blood or otherwise. He had been erased: as if he’d never crossed the street to her, as if he’d never smiled in that first meeting in the museum, as if they’d never entered the elevator, as if she’d been alone in this sea of darkness forever.
The thought jumped into her mind that perhaps she had.
“Ah, you are awake now, Dr. Neuman? Very good.” The gravelly voice spoke from nearby.
The sound of his voice, combined with the two spotlights switching on again, caused her to start. She blinked at the sudden brightness.
Josef Weiszl sat on a folding chair just meters away, the gold-handled cane resting against one thigh, his arms comfortably resting on the chair’s armrests, fingers engaged in their habitual tapping. Tap up. Tap down. He took a break from his tapping to motion regally with one hand to her right.
She turned and found a small bottle of mineral water, which she grabbed and drank greedily. After wiping her mouth with the back of one hand, she sat up straighter, finally able to speak in a hoarse voice. “Where is Jonas? Is he… dead?”
Tap up. Tap down. “You are an intelligent young woman, Dr. Neuman. What do you think? You, yourself, are only alive because you are the, shall we say, pet of my trusted colleague and friend. But make no mistake about it….” Weiszl stopped tapping and leaned toward her for emphasis. As he did so, his silver combover flopped forward, displacing his attempted gravity with a comedy at once humorous and terrifying. “Make no mistake: I will have my way, and your end will come shortly. As a courtesy to Hans, I will, however, be pleased to make it less… uh… dramatic, if you’d prefer.”
He leaned back in his chair and resumed his ritual. Tap up. Tap down.
Vanesa forced herself to swallow her grief over Jonas, to take the terror of her predicament and Weiszl’s threat and file it away for future consideration. She could not afford fear at the moment. She became conscious of the gooseflesh on her arms, and hugged them to her sides until it subsided. She glanced again at the impenetrable darkness surrounding her, and finally glared up at Weiszl.
Although her voice trembled, she mustered indignation and managed to add unmistakable scorn to her words when she finally spoke. “Josef Weiszl, staff member in the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague. Reported to Hans Guenther. Believed to be currently living in Romania. For your direct responsibility in the murder of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, you served, I believe, five years in a French prison?”
By way of answer, Weiszl nodded once deeply. A thin ironic smile crossed his lips as he leaned back, crossed one leg over the other effeminately, and resumed tapping his fingers. He raised one eyebrow sarcastically. “Justice will be served, will it not?”
Vanesa got to her feet, unsteadily at first, the tiles of the floor revolving crazily for a moment. She regained both balance and resolve, ignoring the familiar pull of the scars on her back, and stood straight, looking down at Weiszl.
Vodka stepped into the light, moving closer to protect Weiszl, then turned momentarily away from her, nodding reassuringly to someone in the darkness as if to say, “I’ve got this.”
As he turned, she saw the gun peeking from above his belt at the small of his back. At length, she spoke again, this time with no trembling in her voice. “Since I was a girl, I daydreamed about coming face to face with someone like you. I conjured all kinds of Wonder Woman fantasies of what I would do, of how I would avenge what you and your ilk did to my parents. Now, I find my mythological nemesis to be a pathetic old man with a bad combover, who appears to take pride in his control over smelly beasts like that one—” She pointed to Vodka. “—who seem to enjoy pissing on young women and dragging them back to this… this ludicrous secret basement lair. Wonder Woman, it turns out, wouldn’t have wasted her spit on your shoes. Nor would I. Now, will you let me leave, or at least answer my questions before you….” She paused, momentarily unsure of how to express the demise she was trying to avoid contemplating.
Tap up. Tap down. “Before I have you killed, you mean?” Weiszl said. “Yes, I will answer your questions, but first, I would like to hear what you already know of where you are, what you think I’ve been up to all these years, and who else has been involved. Will you indulge an old man?”
She frowned and shook her head like a parent dismissing a pestering child. “I won’t play your games. I want to know what my grandfather and father were doing here during the war, and I want to know who the man I’ve called Uncle Tomas all these years really is. That’s it. If you want to kill me without telling me, that’s your prerogative. Somehow, I think you’d like to tell me your story, and that’s why you want to hear my extrapolation of it. You’re proud of whatever little blood shrine to the glorious past you’ve created here, and you’d like to impress me with it. So, why don’t you do so? Show me, kill me, move on. You’ll get little more satisfaction from me otherwise, you… you….”
Again, her words failed her. What sound could her throat possibly produce that would be powerful enough to express the overwhelming contempt, the resolute loathing she felt for this human monster? A bellow of rage? A preternatural scream? Abject retching?
To compensate, Vanesa ratcheted her voice up and adopted a goading tone, driven to score points even in this, the ultimate unwinnable game. Yet behind her rage, behind her fear, behind her grief at Jonas’ death, her insatiable drive to understand still lurked. Her unquenchable need to satisfy her curiosity, no matter what the cost, overpowered and continued to trump mere visceral well-being.
“So, show me your art,” she goaded. “Show me what you took from people who were so desperate to live that they’d give up any worldly possessions, and rightly so. Show me this source of pride of yours, so I can spit on it, because this may just be worth my spit.”
/> Weiszl had remained impassive throughout Vanesa’s diatribe. Tap up. Tap down. Now, he paused his tapping, again leaned forward in the folding chair and stared directly into her eyes. The combover stayed put this time. “My dear Dr. Neuman, as you appear to have answered all my questions during your misinformed tirade, I agree that it is only fair to answer yours. First, I would like to disavow you of what appears to be a gross misconception on your part about Galerie.”
He leaned back again to consider his words, then slowly got to his feet, leaning heavily on his cane. “You see, Dr. Neuman, what is on display here is art taken during the war. Art comes in so many forms, does it not? Ordinary art can express a beautifully diverse range of emotions, reflecting so many facets of a human life. Art imitates life, they say, but in Galerie, things are different. The art here is utterly unique because it does not attempt to mimic life, but rather has successfully captured it. Galerie is not an imitation of life, Dr. Neuman, Galerie is life itself.”
With this, he snapped his fingers. Section by section, with a crash of electrical discharge at each illumination, the powerful spotlights in the vast hall around Vanesa sparked on.
She blinked away the sudden brightness, and the room revealed itself to her, deflating her swagger immediately. She again fell to the floor, this time on one knee, as if in perverse monarchical reverence. Silent tears blinded her eyes, and her mouth worked codfish-like, helpless to find words. Her hands rose to press hard against her temples, as if to block out the reality that confronted her. It was a reality she had always known on some level to be true, but had never dreamed of accepting.
Oh, Grandfather, she thought. What have you done?
New York City, 1938
Never before had Hans Guenther experienced actual awe. He had been impressed, surely, by the cold logic and organizational talents of his new boss in Vienna. He had been moved, certainly, by the Fuehrer’s more impassioned speeches. He had been brought to tears on occasion by a powerful rendition of the Faust Overture.
But this… this was beyond anything he’d experienced in his twenty-eight years.
The heels of his black leather boots had echoed so loudly in the after-hours emptiness of the museum that he had to stop walking in order to address Henry Osborne, Jr., his esteemed guide, and son of the museum’s recently-deceased and legendary president. The boots’ tock-tock-tock stopped suddenly as they crossed the splendor of the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, which dominated the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History. From the gloom of the nighttime rotunda, Guenther stared past the twin brown marble columns into the brightly lit Akeley Hall of African Mammals. His mouth visibly dropped open as he walked forward.
He faced a herd of charging African Elephants. The ears of the bull elephant, which stood some three meters high, were thrown forward in rage. His angry trunk was an accusing finger pointing directly at Guenther’s chest, his tusks two spears threatening imminent impalement, his black eyes open so wide that the wrinkles on their brows were like foothills to the mountain of his massive head.
Behind and to both sides of the elephant herd, brightly lit windows opened into alternate universes: a golden lioness licked her paws under an African sun; a wild boar mother watched over her young with evident maternal pride; a male gorilla asserted his lordship over a misty green mountainside. These, and eleven other universes, winked at Guenther from behind clear glass, each containing stunningly lifelike animals in meticulously recreated settings.
“They are so real.” Guenther turned to Osborne, smiling like a child. The tock-tock-tock resonated with increasing urgency as he scurried from diorama to diorama, making a full round of the hall over the course of some ten minutes.
Osborne stood watching with mild amusement, until Guenther clomped back to him, standing under the imposing tusks of the lead East African Elephant.
“He was a genius, a true… how do say… kuenstler? Artiste, yes?” Faltering in his excitement, Guenther’s heavy-tongued but rich English was barely understandable.
Osborne responded somewhat oratorically. “Yes, Carl Akeley was a genius, a true groundbreaker. This hall is truly his legacy. He developed techniques that could capture the subtleties of animal anatomy in detail far greater than traditional taxidermy had ever achieved. These animals were born twice, my father used to say: once at the hands of the Almighty, and once at the hands of Akeley.” Osborne smiled wryly. “Of course, there are those who feel that wildlife is better observed in its natural environment.”
“The natural environment? Who needs the natural environment?” Guenther waved a hand dismissively. “Do you not see, Herr Osborne? We can create our own natural environment. Akeley has demonstrated our true power, not just over nature’s creations, but over nature itself. Look around you. Akeley didn’t just recreate the natural environment, he captured it. He tamed it. He packaged and preserved something that will disappear—wie sagt man?—inevitably. He’s showing us that we can possess the natural environment, dominate it.”
At this, he enthusiastically threw out his arms to encompass the hall, then checked himself and reassumed the air of grave dignity he’d practiced since getting the news that he was to join the brief SS fact-finding delegation to New York. It had been an honor not only to have been chosen, but to have been chosen by SS-Obersturmfuehrer Adolf Eichmann himself, the head of Vienna’s new Central Office for Jewish Emigration and a rising star in the Third Reich.
Osborne pushed his glasses onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Yes, I can see how that could be interpolated from Akeley’s work, the dominance of man over nature and whatnot. There was certainly an element of this thinking inherent in his generation’s attitude toward nature. But you see, Mr. Guenther, this is simply not the case. Akeley, and even Theodore Roosevelt, with whom he hunted in Africa on several occasions, were actually conservationists. Yes, they were realists who understood that much of the natural world was inevitably, as you said, bound to be steamrolled by mankind. Yet they felt that killing and preserving species in places like this museum would ensure that they were not lost to posterity. Akeley Hall is not a symbol of man’s dominance over the species of the world, but rather of man’s respect for them. This is why Akeley himself, as you may know, worked tirelessly to create the first mountain gorilla sanctuary in the Belgian Congo. He did so out of love, not triumph.”
Guenther straightened the black leather belt creeping up from his waist, pulled the black SS dress uniform coat down haughtily, and drew himself up to his full height. “Do you know, Herr Osborne, the primary difference between we Germans and you Americans? That is, those of you who are still of pure Nordic stock, not yet tainted by the plague of racial pollution that you seem unable, or unwilling, to stop? We both inherently grasp our superiority over the degenerate races—as you certainly know your late father did—and we both act in the interests of maintaining this superiority, much as your people did when you eradicated your native population in the previous century. The primary difference between us, as I see it, is that we National Socialists are unafraid to state publically what you prefer to hide behind populist and quasi-democratic rhetoric.”
Osborne began to object, but Guenther politely raised a finger, indicating that he had not yet finished. “Herr Osborne, deep inside, you know who is master and who is subordinate. Look at the way you treat your Negros, your Jews? Looking at these dioramas, I am convinced that Akeley understood this, for who carried his tents and who emptied his chamber pots on his long African expeditions? How many hundreds of elephants did he kill before he found just the right specimens for this herd? Akeley’s work is a monument to our race’s domination over the lowest level of species, the animals. Herr Akeley paved the way, Herr Osborne. Now, we Germans can continue this work, but not in the darkness of back rooms and hidden workshops. We, Herr Osborne, have made the choice to overtly triumph, in ways you have not yet begun to imagine. That is why the world watches us so attentively, perhaps with bit of… how you say… ehrfurcht!
Yes, awe… because it is only we who have the will to unashamedly monumentalize our domination over all the degenerate species, not just the animals.”
Prague, May 8, 1945
“Neuman! Neuman! Get over here. Now, Neuman!”
Hans Guenther’s voice, at first simply assertive, took on a manic quality as it rose in pitch. Now that he was on the verge of putting his plan in motion, it seemed suddenly imperative that it all happen now, immediately—no more time to wait. He took the dead officer’s pistol from its holster. It felt reassuring in his hand.
“Neuman! Where the fuck are you, you stupid Jew?”
Jakub Neuman hurried across the hall from one of the recessed access doors that led into the display cases. Though a small man, unassuming in manner from years of practice serving people with the power of life and death over him, he nevertheless lacked the subservience that is the result of actual submission. With his thin and graying hair, and the dark circles ringing red eyes that radiated equal measures of exhaustion and grief, he was long past concealing fear. Too much had already been taken; there could be no more loss. His once-white apron was smeared with something dark red. He had been painting a background, and had not heard the Sturmbannfuhrer calling.
He apologized and provided answers to series of rifled-off questions. Yes, he was almost finished with this last display. No, he didn’t need much more time. How could he be of assistance?
Behind the grill with the Galerie symbol so intricately incorporated in its ironwork, Michael Neuman watched and listened wide-eyed, as he had so often done over the past two years.
Guenther waved the pistol dismissively at Jakub’s apology. “Things have changed. Come with me into the workshop. Now.”
As Jakub waited deferentially near the workshop entrance, Guenther crossed the hall and bent to retrieve a small folded note from under one of the display cases. He unfolded it and moved his lips as he silently read its contents, seeming to commit them to memory. He then re-crossed the hall and pushed past Jakub through the door marked “Staff Only.”
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