by Elly Welt
I lifted the flaps of the unsealed carton. There were three jars inside, the same kind as those containing the brains which were already on the shelves. They were packed in a shredded wood packing material and divided by corrugated cardboard.
I reached in and carefully lifted out one jar. It was about the size of a night pot, just large enough so that a human brain could rest without being crushed or damaged. Where the glass lid fit onto the jar, the glass was ground or matted so the lid would adhere securely. It was sealed with paraffin.
“What does it say?” the Yugoslav asked me.
Cradling the jar in two hands, I read the label, which was white with black stenciling and covered almost one entire side of the jar:
SEVENTH LUFTWAFFE LAZARETTO
STRELITZ
No. G. R. 041222 6700 Lt.
21 04 43
22 04 43
Compound Fracture—Sepsis
Brain Removed Intact
Preservative: Formalin
By Hans Bremer,
Medical Sgt. Major
“What do you think it means?”
“The brain was removed at the Seventh Field Hospital in Strelitz. The patient . . . the person . . . died of blood poisoning from a fracture?”
“Right. Go on.”
“It . . . the brain was put in the jar by Sergeant Major Hans Bremer?”
“Bremer removed the brain and put it in the jar.”
“They use formalin? I thought . . . I understood that they used alcohol.”
“Nonsense. Formaldehyde. One never uses alcohol. They come here already picked in the formaldehyde.”
“But who is it . . . was it?”
“Tells you on the label. Read those first numbers.”
“Number G. R. zero, four, one, two, two, two, six, seven, zero, zero, L. T.—he was a lieutenant?”
“Right.”
“In the Luftwaffe? You mean these were all air force personnel?”
“Right.”
“G. R. is a classification?”
“His initials followed by birth date.”
“Zero four, twelve, twenty-two. December fourth, nineteen twenty-two. He is—he’d be twenty.”
“Gunther Rathke, age twenty.”
“Is that his name?” I looked curiously at the brain I held in my hands.
“No, I made that up. His complete history will be sent here later. Look at those other numbers. He died on April twenty-first, nineteen forty-three, and the autopsy was the next day, on April twenty-second.”
“Was he, most likely, sick in some way? Epilepsy or so?”
“To the contrary, these are the brains of fallen young aviators, the cream, so to speak. Goering’s superior, elite, consummate Aryan youth—second only, of course, to Himmler’s beloved S.S.”
“What will they do with them here?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing! There is no research. This is just a collecting place, dead storage. Sometime in the future, if they get all the papers—medical histories and all—they may try to see if any of the known physical or psychic abnormalities are reflected or can be demonstrated in the brain.”
“Will they be able to tell that from dissecting his brain?” I looked curiously at Gunther Rathke.
“No. Nothing. The brain itself isn’t enough. They would need the spinal cord, too. And even then they’d find out nothing. In any case, the field autopsies are too crude and insufficient, and no biochemical data can be obtained.”
“But that’s crazy!”
“The amount of craziness in scientific research is higher than the Chimborazo—but especially in the Third Reich.” The Yugoslav stood, all in one motion. “Most especially in the Third Reich. They want us down the hall. Put Rathke away and come along.” And before I could ask him more, he was loping down the hall toward Personnel.
I put Gunther Rathke back in his box with the other two Aryan creams of the crop and was about to push myself to my feet, when I saw that Sonja Press was ascending. My God, she was lovely. She started the last flight at quite a clip but slowed considerably as she neared the top. When I was certain she could see me, I leaped to my feet à la Yugoslav and bounced down a few steps to help her.
“Ohhh!” She was breathless. “Ohhhh. I ran all the way from first.” I extended my arm. She took it. “Thank you, Josef. You are such a dear.” And I, more or less, pulled her up the last few steps, where, still, she clung to my arm. “These brains made me sick.” She closed her eyes, and I led her down the corridor toward the others, who watched us moving toward them, realizing, no doubt, that she would have the latest information from the Chief. As we approached them, Ignatov and Rabin burst into rapid Russian. Rabin, all the time he was at the Institute, never learned German.
Sonja soothed them with a few soft Russian words and slipped into the Personnel Office. I followed her and saw that Herr Wagenführer was pulling cards from one file and putting them into others. Krupinsky reached in and grabbed my sleeve. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Reluctantly, I stepped back into the corridor.
“Tatiana,” he said, separating the new girl from the pack of wolves surrounding her, “this is Josef. He’s our math genius. He knows the multiplication table backwards and forwards—even the sevens.”
Good Lord!
“Josef, Tatiana here is our new floating lab assistant.” She was as good-looking up close as she had been from a distance, with strong features: large, dark eyes and a firm chin. “She’s a half-Jew like you,” said that stupid schmuck.
“How do you do,” she said curtly, extending her hand in such a way that I knew that she, too, had attended Dance and Social Behavior Classes. Krupinksy, of course, wouldn’t even know such classes existed.
“Enchanted,” I said in French, just to get back at Krupinsky, and I bowed and kissed her hand. One doesn’t actually touch the lips to the hand, of course.
Herr Wagenführer, carrying a long drawer of file cards, joined us at that moment, and I abruptly stepped away from Tatiana to be near Sonja. No doubt, I got off on the wrong foot with her—Tatiana—from the very beginning. Obviously, she was accustomed to having men fall all over her, so she could reject them. In any case, at that moment I was obsessed with Sonja Press.
Herr Wagenführer cleared his throat and began to speak, pausing every sentence or two so Sonja could translate into Russian for Rabin, Bolotnikov, and Ignatov. “As you must have gathered by now, we are in the process of being inspected without having received prior notice. The agency is the Ministry for the Coordination of Total War Effort, and it is interested, it turns out, only in the genetic aspects of the research done here and how that relates to the war effort. We foresee no problems for any of you. It is just a matter of keeping you out of the way for four hours, until two o’clock this afternoon, when you may feel free to return to your own work. These inspectors do not have security clearance to come up on the Luftwaffe or Mantle floors.” He pointed to the file drawer under his arm. “Your cards are removed from these files I carry down to them.”
“Herr Wagenführer,” said Sonja, “at noon they will be having lunch in the dining room, and at one the Chief would like Rabin to give a concert for them in the parlor.”
“Yes, all right, but I would prefer that certain others stay away from the first and second floors until all the inspectors have left the premises. Now, Fräulein Press, please inform Professor Boris Ivanovich Ignatov that he may continue with his normal activities in the park, and if he is asked, which I doubt, he may say that he is in the Department of Genetics and Evolution. Inform Stanislas Rabin that he may return to his piano and prepare a concert: no Chopin, no Russians, only German composers.”
He waited until she translated, then said, “Please ask them if they have any questions.”
“They want to know if they may leave now?”
Herr Wagenführer nodded, and Ignatov and Rabin, looking relieved, walked together toward the stai
rs.
“Now, Professor Igor Vasilovich Bolotnikov and Professor François Marie Daniel”—Herr Wagenführer nodded to the new man, obviously French; I found out later that he was a physicist who worked with photons—“you two will go to a Mantle laboratory on fourth. Fräulein Press will show you the way. If you are asked, which I doubt, you will say you are employed by the Mantle Corporation. Once you are in the laboratory, someone will show you what your duties will be for the day. Please stay there until the inspectors have left the premises. Do you have any questions?”
They shook their heads.
“You may go now.”
As Bolotnikov and François Daniel started down the hallway with Sonja, she threw me a little wave. Then that damned Frenchman, whom some might consider quite good-looking, offered her his arm, and she took it!
That left the new girl, the new boy, Krupinsky, the Yugoslav, and me. Herr Wagenführer continued his instructions. “Tatiana Rachel Backhaus and Eric van Leyden, I am sorry, but you two are so new I have not had time to make any files, so you must remain hidden in the darkroom on third until two o’clock, when the inspectors will have left the premises.”
“Lucky dog,” said Krupinsky, snickering. “Better send a chaperone with the lady.”
“I can take care of myself,” Tatiana Backhaus said firmly, tossing her chin in the air. And one had the feeling that she could.
“Where is this darkroom?” asked van Leyden, who, it turns out, was a medical student from Holland.
“I will show you as soon as I have assigned these others,” said Herr Wagenführer. “Now, Josef Leopold Bernhardt, Dr Abraham Morris Krupinsky”—he paused and took a deep breath—“and Professor Dmitri Varvilovovich Tsechetverikov will remain here on fifth in Brain Research. If you are asked, which I doubt, you will say you are in the Luftwaffe’s Department of Neurophysiological Research. Could you perhaps”—he looked at the Yugoslav—“run encephalographs on each other?”
“Yes, of course,” said the Yugoslav.
“Do you have any questions?”
We did not.
The Dutch Medical Student offered Tatiana Backhaus his arm, but she refused it. They went down the stairs with Herr Wagenführer; the Yugoslav, Krupinsky, and I walked into the Electroencephalograph Laboratory on fifth.
The EEG machine was housed in a Faraday cage, a copper-mesh cage that was supposed to eliminate all external electromagnetic fields, but didn’t. “Not a hundred percent,” said Krupinsky.
“Not even fifty percent,” said the Yugoslav. “It’s super-sensitive to any kind of noise or vibration, so stand still while I try to adjust it.”
The machine was white and quite large, the size of a kitchen table. The top had a paper drive mechanism, with paper about half a meter wide on a roll. There was a tray on each side, and the paper stretched across the machine. For recording, there were ten pens on arms, and for every pen there were three or four buttons to adjust, including one for the amount of ink flowing through. And each pen had to be calibrated so that it showed a deflection of one cm per 100 microvolts. In other words, for every pen, there was a complete push-pull amplifier—highly sensitive—with its own battery supply.
Another adjustment was that the deflection for positive or negative was the same. So the amplifier had to be balanced. Then there was an adjustment for the rejection of fifty-cycle hum. And the whole affair was run on batteries—six-volt wet cells for the heaters of the tubes, then dry batteries for the other required voltages. The Yugoslav had to check all this, including the batteries, before he could even begin to run a test.
After half an hour, he said, “I’ve only worked with this thing twice before, and both times the pens got to swinging and covered the paper and me with ink. O.K., Josef, sit yourself in that chair over there and Krup will hook you up.”
They had a wire-mesh helmet, which Krupinsky fixed to my head with elastic adhesive. There were little wires with tiny cups which he filled with electrode jelly and then bent back so the cups would touch my scalp—twenty or so of them. It was slow work and difficult because I had so much hair.
“Won’t work,” said Krupinsky at one point. “We’ll have to shave his head.”
“Go to hell,” I muttered.
When all the wires were attached, they had me stretch out on my back on a leather bench in the center of the room. It was hard and uncomfortable. Instead of a pillow, there was a neck support, the kind they use for the guillotine, except that I was face up, my helmeted head hanging over the support.
The wires were formed into cables, which, in turn, were plugged into the electroencephalograph. Then Krupinsky attached a large metal plate to one leg. I knew it wasn’t going to work.
Krupinsky stood beside me. “Ready,” he said.
The Yugoslav, at the controls, said, “O.K., Josef. Relax.”
“Ha!” I said.
“Hush,” shushed Krupinsky.
I could hear the machine whir to a start as the paper was set in motion.
“O.K., now, Josef,” said the Yugoslav quietly, “open your eyes . . . Now close your eyes and relax . . . Now do what you usually do and think of nothing . . . Damn . . . damn. There’s nothing but a fifty-cycle hum in the pens. Christ! The goddamn ink.” I could hear him shutting off the switches, and the machine hummed to a stop.
Krupinsky was over beside the machine now, and I heard him say, “There also seems to be an EKG superimposed.”
“We’ll have to do the whole thing over,” said the Yugoslav.
“Can you let me out of this thing?” I hollered from my guillotine.
They both ignored me and continued their idiotic conversation.
“Let me out of here.”
Nothing.
“Have you tried adjusting the in-phase rejection circuit?” I called over to them.
That they heard. They walked over to me, and when I looked at the Yugoslav, I burst out laughing. His face and the front of his white lab coat were covered with black ink. Krupinsky took a good look at him and started to laugh, then the Yugoslav started to laugh, and we all laughed and laughed and laughed until we were in tears. Here I was, my cross-breed brain wired to a stupid machine, and Gunther Rathke’s pure-bred Aryan brain in the hall, and those Nazis touring the fruit flies on second, trying to figure out how those happy little winemakers could help Adolf Hitler win the war. I think the absurdity of it all hit us, for, obviously, the Yugoslav must have had some Jewish blood in him, too, or he wouldn’t have been hidden in the Luftwaffe’s Brain Research Department.
Krupinsky finally unhooked me from the machine and removed the helmet. “We’ll have to do the whole thing over again,” he said.
“What was that you said about in-phase rejection?” the Yugoslav asked me.
“I was thinking about it,” I said. “As some of the interfering currents are arriving with the same phase at the electrodes, I would imagine that by balancing a circuit in the amplifier one could almost eliminate this particular type of disturbing signal. In other words, it would serve mainly to eliminate a fifty-cycle hum and the EKG.”
The Yugoslav said, “How do you know so much about electroencephalographs?”
“I don’t. But I do know about amplifiers.”
The Yugoslav looked dubiously at Krupinsky, who said, “I hate to admit it, but the little pisher knows what he’s talking about when it comes to machines. People, on the other hand, he doesn’t know from borscht.”
They let me at the machine, and I was able to balance the circuit in the amplifier by putting a dummy electrode into the circuit with a switch. I explained it to them. “This mimics the condition of putting real electrodes on the skull, one of the main characteristics of which is that there is a certain resistance between those two points. The higher the resistance, the more apt you are to pick up interfering signals. What you try to do is adjust these two potentiometers to eliminate all the interfering signals picked up.”
“What makes the ink spray?” asked Krupinsky.
And I looked at each pen, too, not only to balance the amplification but also to check the ink flow. Just as I had thought, the ink was clotted in two of them and running too fast in two others.
When I thought it was all ready, I sat again on the chair and Krupinsky reapplied all the cups with fresh electrode jelly. Then I lay down on the couch. Krupinsky, as before, stood beside me. I could hear the machine rolling.
“Blink your eyes,” said the Yugoslav. “Don’t move . . . Imagine Marlene and Monika, or how about the new girl, what’s her name? Tatiana? Yes, Tatiana with the long black hair and almond-shaped eyes . . . Now, don’t move. Krupinsky will tickle you but do not move.”
Krupinsky tickled my gut and under my arm, but I did not move.
Then the two of them held a conversation which was supposed to make me angry. “He’s from superior stock, you know,” said Krupinsky. “He’s one of those high-toned Sephardic German Jews who won’t have anything to do with us low-class Ashkenazis.” And so on.
In two or three minutes, which seemed much longer to me, they were through. Krupinsky carefully removed the mesh helmet. Then I walked over to the machine and tried to get them to explain what the encephalogram said about my brain waves.
“It’s disgusting,” said Krupinsky. “If you think at all, you have nothing on your brain but evil thoughts.”
“Come on,” I pleaded with the Yugoslav. “What does it say?”
He looked long and carefully at the inky lines scribbled across the paper. “It demonstrates,” he said thoughtfully, “that even birds have larger brains than you.”
Then the Yugoslav sat in the chair while Krupinsky fitted him with the helmet and I readjusted the machine, which Krupinsky wanted to operate. I fixed it so as soon as he turned it on, he would get sprayed with black ink. Unfortunately, I stood too close; he grabbed me and I got some in the face, too.
