Death of the Gods

by Rex Baron

  A faint smile found its way to his face at the thought of having her back again, even if only in this new and tenuous association. He could hardly wait to tell her what had come to him as a bolt out of the blue. She would be so relieved to know that he no longer intended to interfere. Surely, this was what she had been trying to make him see all along, that they belonged together as always, but in this new way, oddly more creative and suitable, after all.

  He lifted a gloved hand like a white flag in a feeble little wave of surrender, but it went unnoticed by Helen.

  Kurt clomped across the grass toward Claxton and his red-faced companion. He took the woman's arm and held it out at her side, then balanced a small yellow pasteboard cutout of a bird near her wrist. Kurt overwhelmed her sputter of complaints by shouting back to the Chancellor, who stood watching the proceedings with unbridled amusement.

  “There, now,” Kurt instructed the trembling woman. “All you need do is remain steady and the bird will retrieve the pawn at the sound of the signal.”

  The perturbed woman strained to distance her plump body from her own arm, holding the decoy out as far as possible.

  Claxton watched with detachment, a vague cynicism forming in his brain, relating the vulgarity of the event to a knife-throwing act in the circus. But the remark failed to take audible shape and lost itself in the backwash of emotions more urgent and painful than mere sarcasm.

  Kurt advanced to within a few feet of the Chancellor and his guests, and with great ceremony, placed the pitch pipe to his lips, producing a clear and directed paean of sound that caused one of the birds to glide with the swiftness of an arrow to its mark, snatching the yellow decoy in its beak, without so much as a scratch to the trembling arm presenting the prey.

  The onlookers applauded their approval, as the relieved contestant happily jogged her way across the open stretch to the safety of the crowd and the steadying comfort of a glass of schnapps.

  Claxton held the field alone. He was, once again it seemed, the actor he had been so long ago. A soliloquy formed in his brain, drawing together fragments from Shakespeare or an oration of Cicero. He drew himself up into the stately and visually eloquent stature of an orator.

  Kurt approached and offered a yellow decoy to be placed in position. Claxton took the offering without resistance, the hemlock of the disapproving new world who despised him, a new world not designed for a singular voice, but for a cacophony of choral unison, sounding in agreement to the discord of hatred and madness proclaimed by this New Order.

  He placed the decoy on his hand and held it out at his side. Kurt nodded his approval and clapped him confidently on the shoulder. He strode across the lawn and presented the pitch pipe to the Chancellor, instructing him where to place his mouth to produce the desired sound.

  Claxton stood alone in the field. His arm began to tremble at the idea of the heavy dark wings and the shrill sound from the prehistoric throats of the hideous birds. He calmed himself by turning his attention to Helen. Her face caught the afternoon sunlight for a fleeting instant, and he saw her as he had that first day, standing amongst a group of extras, waiting to be noticed, shining above them all, a dark and glowing star, a nova of light like none other he had ever seen. He loved her now as he loved her then, without escape, for all time. A phrase from a long forgotten monologue drifted into his brain, searching for escape and finding its way out through his lips.

  “How oft when men are at the point of death they make merry,” he half whispered to the treetops and the mountains, so like those of California, vaguely rising up before him in the distance “...their keepers call a lightening before death. But how may I call this a lightening. Death that has sucked the honey from thy breath has no power over thy beauty, and beauty's ensign is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks.”

  The Fuhrer gave two short practice squeaks, then let out a peal of sound that caused all the flock to take to the air. The collective shadow caused by the roar of outstretched wings blotted out the light illuminating the meadow.

  “No...” Michael bolted forward in the crowd, screaming. He tried to run out into the field but was held back.

  Claxton looked up at the sky, darkening with the creatures he hated. He was set out as a scarecrow for birds that had no fear of him. They descended on him as a trained pack, pecking at his face and piercing his throat with their saber-sharp beaks. They swarmed over him like great black insects, then left him, returning once again to the air. The crowd looked on in horror as Claxton remained standing, his arm still out as his side, the blood pouring from his eyes and throat. He was already dead seconds before toppling into a heap on the grass.

  “You killed him,” Michael shouted. “You meant to kill him! I heard you plotting it!” The boy broke free and started to run. He ran out across the meadow, past his fallen friend and beyond, to the open road leading back to town.

  Helen stood open-mouthed with shock, until Kurt took her arm and jerked her hard. She collapsed against him in a suitable pantomime of despair and disbelief. He lifted her into his arms and started toward the house.

  “I'm sorry,” the Chancellor said, waving the pitch pipe helplessly like a thief wanting to dispose of a stolen purse. “I had no idea…”

  “It is an accident that could happen one time in a million,” Kurt said. “You simply sounded the wrong chord. No one will blame you. Think no more about it.”

  He carried Helen to the drawing room of the house and laid her on the sofa. Her arms clung around his neck and she gripped her eyes tight. They only opened as he pressed his mouth against hers. He knelt beside her whispering low, so that the worried eavesdroppers outside the door would not hear. He gently placed his fingers against her lips to silence her.

  “I told you I would make it all right for us,” he said. “There isn't a person in Germany who is going to question the Fuhrer about his unfortunate little accident.”

  Chapter Eight

  Munich

  Michael ran until his body ached and his lungs felt as if they would burst in the chill of the evening air. He had run along the highway, fired with the hysteria of what he had seen happen to his friend. Constantly, he looked over his shoulder to see if they were in pursuit, but there was no one there. He decided it best to slip down an embankment at the side of the road and continue moving toward the city, half hidden by the hedgerows and country rail fences along the way.

  As evening fell, he clutched his thin wool jacket around him and crossed his arms to try and keep warm. The frozen earth cracked under his feet as he plodded on. His hand felt the motoring cap in his pocket and he pulled it out and clapped it on his head.

  Long hours passed in the near total blackness of the moonless night. A car approached from somewhere down the road, its two arching lights sweeping across the horizon like searchlights on an open sea. As the car twisted toward him, he reckoned that it was coming safely from the west. Frostbite in his fingers and toes told him that he had to chance stopping this car. He lay down by the side of the road and watched it approach, anxious to have a tenuous look at it before risking his life. At the turn in the road, he could make out the shape of an old car, a far cry from one of the Duisenbergs or limousines used to drive the guests from the country outing back into town.

  As the car approached, he leapt to his feet, and waving his arms, signaled the auto to stop. He stationed himself in the middle of the road to avoid being passed by and felt that if the driver chose to strike him down rather than stop, it might be an acceptable alternative to the aching in his hands and the lifelessness of his feet and lower legs.

  An elderly woman behind the wheel skidded the car to a halt and rolled down the window.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked. “What do you want?”

  “A ride, please,” Michael suggested, anxious not to appear too bold and frighten her away. “I got left behind out here and am walking back to Munich.”

  He could see the old woman's face in the reflected light of the headlamps,
considering his request.

  “I'm not going that far, but I can get you within a few kilometers of the bus line. In the meantime, jump in and warm yourself,” she said.

  Michael bounded across the road on unfeeling feet and climbed into the shabby old car.

  During the ride, Michael's benefactress softened, and untrue to her word, she drove him the whole distance to the bus station and deposited him there with a friendly goodbye.

  He caught a bus by ten-thirty and was back in the city by midnight. The walk from the station to the Blumenstrasse, where he and Lexi lived, was a grueling reprise of the agony he had felt earlier on the highway. Napoleon's trek across Russia was of no consequence by comparison, he thought aloud.

  By the time he reached the apartment building, he was worn down with exhaustion. As he climbed the stairs, he reached for his key and realized that he had left it behind in his overcoat. Softly, he knocked on the door, hoping to wake Lexi, but anxious not to arouse the suspicion of the neighbors. There was no telling who one might trust. There were informants all around them. That was what he had been told where he worked. It was the very thing his office was promoting to the public, a conspiracy campaign to encourage informants to identify Jews and undesirables in their midst. Now, without Claxton, Michael would surely be considered both.

  He knocked again but found no answer. He stood transfixed for long moments, stunned by exhaustion, trying to coax his mind into telling him what to do next. He must warn his sister, he thought. She must hear what had happened in the country, before it came distorted from the mouths of Helen and the others.

  In the lobby of the apartment building, he found a few curled pieces of stationary and a pen, in what once had been the station of the concierge. He scrawled a note explaining what he knew and told her that he would try to make it to the border. There was no future for him now in the Fatherland, he wrote. He would leave for Holland and hopefully make his way to England.

  “I was wrong to do what I did,” he wrote. “Uncle Jacob said that something bad would happen for living this lie, and I guess this is my punishment.”

  He sealed the envelope and slipped it under the door of the apartment, then galvanized his aching body to, once again, take to the street.

  It was one-thirty by the clock at the corner chemist. The windows of the shops and restaurants were dark, without the comfort of human faces and laughter. Michael pulled his cap down over his ears and walked toward the Jewish quarter.

  As he arrived at the narrow street where Uncle Jacob had his shop, shattered glass lay all around, covering the pavement, glistening in the dim light from the street lamps like a powdering of snow. The plate glass windows on all sides were smashed and their contents dragged out onto the pavement, broken and trampled as if by some wild and vengeful beast. It was quiet and still, as it was everywhere, but here was an eerie stillness, the stillness of absence rather than sleep.

  He cautiously made his way around the corner, stepping over the jumble of clothing and broken furniture in his path. An open suitcase, packed for travel, stood unattended in the middle of the sidewalk, its contents neatly folded and carefully arranged. It stood in opposition to the destructive fury of what lay all around it, a contradiction of precision and gentleness, like a photograph he had once seen of a straw driven into the trunk of a tree during a hurricane.

  His uncle's shop had been smashed and looted. Empty velvet display cards that once contained gold jewelry lay scattered on the pavement. The door stood open and Michael stared down in disbelief at familiar household objects incongruously and ominously out of place. A brocade tablecloth, which had been embroidered by his aunt, and a surviving china cup lay on the floor. His mind raced. It was a full minute before he was able to convince himself that this was not some natural disaster, some act of God from which they had all taken shelter in some friendlier street. They had been taken, arrested by the police for the crimes that his Ministry had invented. Tears welled up in his eyes. He stepped toward the door and faintly called his uncle's name, half hoping that he may have somehow miraculously been passed over and spared like their ancestors had in ancient days.

  Behind him he heard the sound of glass cracking underfoot and spun around to see two uniformed officers in long black leather coats walking toward him. They were two of the men who had carried the falcon cages at the Berchtesgaden. They were two of Von Kragen's men.

  “There you are, young man,” one of the faceless silhouettes said. “We've been looking all afternoon for you. We would have given you a ride home, but you left so suddenly.”

  “I don't know anything,” Michael shouted back hysterically.

  “Of course you don't,” the even voice continued. “There is nothing to worry about. Your sister is waiting for you. Come, we will take you to her.”

  Michael resisted. He started to run but was cut off by the other man. They caught him by his arms and dragged him to a black car waiting in the street nearby. He was forced into the back and lay on the seat between the two men.

  “I won't say anything. I promise,” he whimpered as he panted for breath.

  “I believe you,” the man said calmly. “I know you won't say anything.”

  Michael felt the man's grip tighten on his arms, pinning him down against the cold leather upholstery. The man who spoke snatched the cap from Michael's head, and rolling it into a ball, held it against the boy's face, choking him with the woolen fabric, cutting off the air, suffocating him until his face was ashen and lifeless.

  Chapter Nine

  Munich, November 1938

  Lexi made her way through the corridor, packed with people. Frail old women and men, paralyzed with exhaustion and grief, stood on faltering legs, unable to find a space to sit, and small children, hungry for their dinner, filled the suffocating air around her with their angry screams of protest.

  It was an old grammar school in a forgotten part of the city, a place once proud and purposeful that now lay in disrepair and disgrace. She peered into each open classroom as she passed, searching for the face of her uncle, horrified at the pain and fear she saw behind every door. She had heard about what they were calling the Night of Broken Glass in the Jewish quarter. Most of the Jewish merchants from that sector had been rounded up and arrested, along with anyone else who the informants cared to include in the vague charges of conspiracy against the Reich.

  The soldiers had brought them here to this place, lost in time, because here their disappearance would go unnoticed. Few people even bothered to look up at the overgrown courtyard and boarded facade as they passed by on the other side of the street.

  Lexi had found her way into the building through a side door. She had wandered in without being questioned. The soldiers were not interested in anyone intruding from the outside. They only concerned themselves with detaining those who were already inside.

  Finally, she saw the old man crouched over in a wooden desk designed for a small child. He had no coat, but wrapped himself in a blanket that he had managed to grab the moment the soldiers had stormed into the shop. His chin rested against his chest in drowsy half-sleep and he did not hear her approach.

  “Jacob,” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. The elder woke with a start. His hands appeared from under the blanket and he rubbed his eyes and face.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked without any sign of recognition on his face.

  “I heard what was happening and I came to find you. They said you had been taken here, but I didn't believe it.”

  Jacob grunted and shook his head, mirroring her disbelief.

  “Why are they doing this to you? What have you done?” she asked, stooping down to the level of the small desk.

  The old man snorted a bitter laugh.

  “Since when must you do anything to be an enemy of the Reich? The very fact that we are Jews is enough. Why have you come? What happens to your people is no longer a concern of yours.”

  “I've come to help,” Lexi insisted. “Surely
there must be something I can do to get you out.”

  Jacob pulled his arm away from her touch.

  A stern-faced matron now stood guard at the door. Lexi jumped to her feet and approached her.

  “There has been a mistake here,” she said. “That old man does not belong with the others,” she said, singling out Uncle Jacob.

  “I have been hearing that all night,” the immovable face replied.

  “But he isn't one of them,” Lexi insisted. “I work for the Ministry of Culture. I am a friend of this man. I have known him for years, and I'm telling you there has been a heinous injustice done.”

  As Lexi orated on his behalf, Jacob fumbled under the blanket, going through his pockets until he produced a yarmulke. Without a word of explanation, he placed it on his head, sealing his fate. Lexi returned to her uncle's side and began to cry.

  “I'm sorry for betraying you,” she sobbed, “but I thought that Mischa and I would have a chance… that's all, just a chance for some kind of life.”

  She glowered up at the heavy matron blocking the doorway.

  “If I can't get you out, I'm going with you. I'll tell them that I'm really a...”

  The old man placed his hand on hers and stopped her before she finished the dangerous thought.

  “It was kind of you to come, young woman,” Jacob said in a clear, audible voice, “but your heroics are not helping your old friend. Go home. Your little brother Michael must be waiting there for you… and tell him you saw old Jacob, won't you.”

  He patted her hand and dismissed her, waving to the matron as if to a servant, instructing her to see his visitor out.

  The stern-faced woman glowered as Lexi stepped past into the hall and numbly made her way through the tumult to the street, and the taxi she had kept waiting.