He bent his head. She saw his skull through his whitening hair. It gleamed a little through the dusk. She saw that it was bony and narrowed. The veins pulsed in his sunken temples, as though he were enduring physical agony. His jaw had dropped open, like the jaw of the dead. This gave him a preoccupied but somewhat imbecile expression.
“What can I do?” he whispered in return. But he seemed to be speaking to himself, and not to her. She seized his arm. She was horrified, even then, at the thinness of it, through his clothing.
“But you are a member of the Party! You can surely speak. They will listen to you? You know Herman well. You know he is no Communist. He has been often at your home.… Kurt, you must do something!”
He looked at her from the caverns of his eyes. “I know nothing,” he whispered. “I know nothing at all.” All at once a wild thin fierceness animated him. “Nothing at all!” He put his trembling hands to his temples. “I have never known anything! Now, I do not want to know!” He seemed galvanized with terror. “Go away, Therese! Let me alone. I can stand no more.”
A moment before she understood she exclaimed: “How can you be so base!”
And then, looking into his nightmare-dull eyes, looking into his dying man’s face, she understood. The horror had him too. Realization had not brought him clarity. It had brought him frenzied insanity and despair. It was a man in extremis who glared back at her blindly. He was not seeing her; he was seeing the Thing she saw in these unspeakable days. He had awakened, like a thousand, thousand others, only to be unable to bear the light of understanding, only to die, not by violence, but only by horror.
She fled from him, as one flees from a corpse. She heard a whimpering sound behind her: “Karl? My brother?” Her feet carried her like wings. She reached the shining afternoon light. She breathed deeply. Her heart was rolling in her chest. She stumbled down the stairs. She was impelled by the wild conviction of pursuit. She reached her car, and literally fell in it. The chauffeur watched her intently as he closed the door.
There was nothing, now, that she could do for Herman Muehler. She was certain of it. But slowly, as her heart and her terror calmed, she began to cast about for help.
There was the General! He was still Germany. He was still potent. She would go to him. She glanced at her watch. It was almost evening. She would go to him tomorrow. In the meantime, she would return to Elizabeth Muehler, and give her what comfort and hope she could.
The car stopped. She was at her tomb of her home. She looked at it in the evening sunlight. All at once, she could not endure it. She tapped on the window. “Frederick, I did not want to come home. Drive me at once to the Muehler house.”
20
When Therese was admitted to the home of the General, with Frau Professor Muehler, she was informed that the Frau General was not at home, but that the General was “at work” in the garden. The two ladies seated themselves, and waited for the old man to enter the gloomy, blue-misted drawing room to receive his guests.
The late summer air was warm and golden outside, and faintly smoky, but here in the drawing-room there was a dank and stifled chill. Therese shivered. The chill entered her tired and aching bones. She glanced at Herman’s wife. The Frau Professor sat in silence, in a sort of white, stony calm, her eyes a little glazed and fixed. While Therese watched her, she lifted a white handkerchief to her lips and dabbed them delicately, and then resumed her posture of unhurried waiting. Therese marvelled at such composure. She remarked to herself that the poise of other Europeans was the result of long and painful effort, but the poise of the British was part of their nature, which fire and flood and death and horror could not shake, though they might destroy. At another time, earlier than this, she might have thought such composure a sign of cold heartlessness. So Germans thought, and the French, and others. But Therese, whose prescience was so quickened these days, knew what anguish lay behind that repose, what utter despair stood in speechlessness behind those unhurried eyes.
She wanted to offer consolation, but in the face of that hard and motionless quiet words of sympathy were abashed. However, she knew that there was more than quiet there; there was also the rockbound strength before which more volatile, more vehement, more hysterical peoples were helpless. She did not like the Englishwoman more for her insight into her nature; but she admired her profoundly.
To any other woman at such a time she would not have said what she said now: “My cousin’s house is the most dismal place in the world.”
The Frau Professor glanced about her quietly. She even smiled a little.
“But I like it. It reminds me of the English houses.”
Therese looked about the room. She had always despised it, and had been amused at it. But all at once it seemed inexorable, immovable, a shelf of rock in a tilting world. The heavy walls and massive furniture were a promise of solidity and succor. They repudiated agony, calmed hot despair. So long as houses like this remained in Germany, she could not go entirely mad.
The General came in, charging into the room like a bald mammoth. He looked less formidable today, for he wore a white woollen shirt and a pair of huge old gray trousers. His pink face streamed with sweat, which he kept wiping with a handkerchief like a small tablecloth. It was evident that he had been exercising. The whites of his eyes were suffused, and the motionless air of the drawing room shook about him like heat waves.
“Ah, Therese,” he roared, pleased and surprised. Coming from the bright sunshine, he did not at first see the other woman, sitting like a stiff statue in the dimness. He had eyes only for Therese, and he blinked at her. He wiped the pleasure from his face when he saw her own. “My dear, Karl is not worse?”
“No, General, he is not worse,” said Therese, giving the old man her hand. He kissed it with an air of relief. He said: “Martina is not home. She is gadding again. Where do you women gad?”
“Oh, everywhere. Anywhere.” Therese smiled slightly. “But I did not come to see Martina, General. I came to see you.”
“Me?” He was delighted, but somewhat bewildered. “How can a lovely girl like you waste her time on an old man?” But he bridled. It was then that he saw the other woman. “Frau Professor!” he exclaimed. He blinked.
Therese laid her hand urgently on his arm. “General, we have come to you for help. Something terrible has happened. The Gestapo has taken Doctor Muehler into something they call ‘protective custody.’ We came to you because you are the only one who can help us.”
He stared, astounded. His great fleshy underlip pushed in and out. His eyes started. “Muehler? Impossible. What for? Are they mad? What has he done? Herman!”
“We do not know. They would not tell us. They merely said something about ‘subversive activities,’ and ‘treason against the State.’ We do not even know where he is, but they must have taken him into custody either at the University or while he was on the way home. They said, at the University, that he left at 11 o’clock, which is extremely unusual, except when he has been ill.”
The General was appalled. He was also infuriated! “The cattle! The swine!” He clenched his fists until they resembled red rocks. “Are they mad?” he repeated, incredulously. He swung about to the Englishwoman. Her calm and quietness reassured him, made him uncertain. A woman in such a situation should have been prostrated, broken. But there the cool fish sat regarding him without emotion. He scratched the back of his thick scarlet neck. “But, is it so bad, Frau Professor? Perhaps our Therese is a little—unnerved?”
The pale fixed lips of the Englishwoman parted. She said: “It is very bad, General.” And then he saw her eyes. He had seen eyes like these in the faces of dying men on the battlefield. They affrighted him, filled him with terror and vicarious suffering.
“Oh, we cannot permit this!” he cried involuntarily. He began to tug at his knitted shirt. “We shall go at once! We shall drag him out of their hands! We shall slap their faces, the dogs!”
He panted. His great face turned crimson. His little eyes we
re blue lightnings. He literally ran out of the room, shaking the floor as he went.
“You see,” said Therese to Herman’s wife. The Englishwoman’s marble face relaxed. A faint color came into it “Thank you,” she said softly. And then, to Therese’s grief, she began to cry soundlessly, and proudly. She dabbed at her eyes. But her attitude made it impossible for Therese to go to her and comfort her.
In an amazingly short time the General returned. Therese stared at him blankly. He was in full uniform, medals, sword, helmet and all. He had not worn this particular field uniform for a long time. His girth had increased, and the gilded buttons strained across his middle. But he was formidable again, and as imposing as a heroic statue of stone. The spike glittered on his helmet; the ancient eagles above his thick white brows gleamed with majesty. He was the Emperor-King of Lohengrin. He was a Viking. He was Thor and Odin. He was Germany, repudiating a mongrel horde of yapping jackals. Even Therese, who was always a little amused by him, was awed. There was a sound about him like invisible trumpets. His military cape hung from his gigantic shoulders, carved and heavy. He was no longer faintly ridiculous.
“Let us go,” he said abruptly. His ancient car was waiting, tall, narrow, but polished. The footman and the chauffeur, seeing him in full dress as they had not seen him for many years, sprang out of the car and stood at attention, their old faces pulsing with pride and passionate emotion. He sat between the two women, his hands folded over the top of his great sword with its faded tassels. He stared straight ahead, not boisterous now, but gloomy and more than a little terrible. He did not seem to breathe. Vengeance, outrage and disgust had turned his red face to the color of gray granite. His waxed mustache bristled. But he said nothing.
They arrived at the Gestapo Headquarters. A measly little clerk was telling a group of prisoners’ relatives that they could not see the Public Prosecutor, and that they were doing their sons, fathers, and husbands no good by their impudent insistence. The clerk had been a subaltern in the army. He was glorying now in his exalted position of being able to bully his betters. He beamed sadistically at the heartbroken women. He rubbed his feeble hands and almost crowed. At one time he had been drawn to the Communist Party. His hatred for those of distinction and Wood was still manifest in his shining rodent’s eyes.
The General strode ponderously into the bare office, his feet shaking the dusty boards. The weeping women fell back. The clerk stared, blinked. Then slowly he rose, and slowly, mechanically he saluted. He dropped his eyes. He was terrified. The General stood before him as a man stands before a cur.
“The Public Prosecutor, at once!” he said, in a tone which denied the manhood of the weasel before him. “General Siegfried von Heyliger, His Majesty’s Field Marshal.”
The clerk trembled. He bent almost double. He saluted again. “Yes, General, yes, yes, General!”
The General stood alone in the center of the room. The sobbing women were silent. Therese dared not approach him. He was looking about him with scorn and detestation. Then he saw the large posturing portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging on the wall, draped in swastikas. He was galvanized. His mighty body shook with rage and contempt. His eyes were outraged. His face swelled, became purple. In two steps he reached the portrait, looked into its eyes. There was something portentous, something frightful in his attitude. Then deliberately he withdrew his sword, cut the cords that held the portrait. It fell to the floor, and the glass shivered. He looked down at it. The mad eyes stared back at him, malevolent. He shuddered. Then he stepped upon the face. His booted heels ground the face to a mass of twisted paper. Then he stepped back, again shuddering as though he had touched something loathsome. His expression had in it horror and repulsion. It was as though he had had a glimpse of an unclean monster, and that even his act of destroying it had polluted his flesh.
The women fell silent. They could not look away. Their pale and tear-stained faces were transfixed. He stood there, not moving, standing on the fallen swastikas. Again he was Odin, in a shuddering triumph.
The clerk scuttled back into the room, panting. “The Public Prosecutor will see you at once, General!” he stammered, saluting and cringing. Then he saw the General, standing on the degraded flags. He saw the smashed portrait. He gasped aloud. But the General turned on him eyes so terrible that he quailed. He shank back, flattening himself against the wall. The General, followed by his two women, passed him without another glance. The other women, affrighted, slunk from the room.
The Public Prosecutor, in the dread uniform of the Gestapo, rose, smiling courteously. He was a quick, lithe, middle-aged man with a fox face. He saluted smartly, came from behind his desk and drew out a chair for the General. He ignored Therese and the Englishwoman. “What an honor, General!” he murmured.
But the General did not sit down. He surveyed the other man with fiery contempt. He held his sword in his hand.
“I demand the immediate release of Herr Professor Herman Muehler,” he bellowed.
The Public Prosecutor’s smile faded. His pale eyes narrowed. He scrutinized the General intently. Then he glanced at the women.
“Are these ladies interested in this case, General?”
The General fumed like an enraged bull. “I do not introduce ladies to men of your class, Herr Prosecutor!” When he spoke the title it was with an emphasis of cold affront and disdain.
Therese was alarmed. This was the wrong way to approach this man, she thought. Now he would be angered. To her surprise, however, he smiled with amusement. He regarded the General almost with indulgence. Then he bowed ceremoniously.
“General, my father was one of your favorite officers. Major von Stedtreiter. I am Fritz, his second son.”
The General’s eyes bulged until they resembled protruding blue-veined marbles. Under his huge white mustache his lips parted blankly. “Eric von Stedtreiter! It is impossible! He would have no son who so degraded himself!” But it was evident that he was disturbed. He finally sat down, stiffly, a monument of a man, with his hands on his sword.
The Prosecutor lithely came from behind his desk again, and offered the two ladies chairs. They sat down. Therese had taken great heart. She made herself catch the officer’s eye, and smiled at him sweetly. He visibly quickened, and shot a bold look at her. Quite inspired, then, he returned to his desk.
The General, still taken aback, mumbled, with a wave of his hand: “This lady is my cousin, Frau Doctor Erlich. Perhaps you have heard of her husband? The writer, Karl Erlich.” It was evident from his surly, preoccupied tone, that some virtue in him was shaken from its base.
“Karl Erlich! Ah, who has not heard of Germany’s greatest artist!” The Prosecutor bowed deeply to Therese, who smiled again. A faint dimple appeared at the corner of her mouth. The man must be placated. It must become a cosy affair, this, to assure the safety of Herman Muehler. “And the brother, is he not, of Herr Professor Kurt Erlich? Who does not know such men!”
“And the other lady—this is Frau Professor Muehler, wife of the gentleman you have in your custody,” muttered the General. He drew a deep breath. He had paled, and there were beads of sweat beginning to drip from under his helmet Suddenly, he could control himself no longer. He burst out in a fury: “But what are you doing, you son of Fritz von Stedtreiter, the bearer of his name, in this rathole? What are you doing in this nest of that Austrian gutter mouse?” He shook his head. “I cannot believe it! It is too disgusting to believe.”
The Prosecutor was not affronted. His amiable smile grew broader. “General, this is another day. The old regime is dead. Pardon me, allow me to finish. Germany has begun again. She is climbing the stairs to the light. What does it matter what heads she uses as stairs?” He was a volatile man, and his mood changed, became respectful, but somewhat stern. “I must repeat, this is another day, General. But we are not inhuman monsters, in spite of Jewish lies. We seek only justice. And so, I am at your service, and I can assure you that I shall do anything in my power to assist you in this deplorable af
fair.”
“What ‘deplorable affair’?” demanded the General, irately. “You talk like a fool.” His thought veered. “Were you not in the army, also?”
“Yes. You shook hands with me once, and congratulated me on my regiment.” He smiled, as though at some past childishness.
“And you are here, in this place!” muttered the General, helplessly. His flesh was the ghastly color of quicksilver.
“I am at your service, General,” repeated the other. He touched a bell. Two young men in the uniform of the Storm Troopers entered the room. “Bring me the dossier of Herman Muehler,” he said. While they waited, he looked at the Englishwoman intently. “I believe you can assist us a little in this, Frau Professor. And I can assure you that only by being frank with me can you help your husband. Tell me: did he take an active part in the Communist Party, or was he merely a passive member?”
The General snorted violently, but the Englishwoman, composed though she was, showed every indication of bewilderment and indignation.
“The Communist Party? That is absurd. Herman despised the Communists.”
The officer raised his brows. His air implied that he was merely gently amused and impatient at an obvious and very crude lie. “You are mistaken, Frau Professor. We have his dossier. He was one of the first important Berlin members of the Communist Party. He entertained prominent members in his own home. We have it in his dossier.”
Now, for the first time, Therese saw the Englishwoman’s composure crack. Her pleasant and sensible face turned white, not with fear or confusion, but with honest anger. She became rigid in her chair. Her eyes flashed.
“And I tell you, Herr Prosecutor, that that is a lie! A vicious lie! From the very first my husband expressed his revulsion for the Communists.” She had difficulty in getting her breath, so intense was her indignation. “I am British, Herr Prosecutor, of an old family. Herman, even had he wished, which is ridiculous, would not have insulted me by bringing such creatures into my house.”
Time No Longer Page 23
