The Holocaust Opera

by Mark Edward Hall

  Then

  By the time Aaron suspected the truth, his obsession had become so powerful that he was nearly insane with it. When he finally came to his senses and realized that he’d been duped, that Eva had been right all along, he tried to abandon the project. He discovered that to end it all would have been to die. The music had captured his soul, but more than that, it had become his heroin and the only way to appease the reaper was to strap the band around his arm and stick the needle in the vein.

  Now

  “Jesus, Jeremiah,” I said. “That’s what’s wrong with me, isn’t it? It’s what’s wrong with you. The music is infected with something evil. That’s why we’re sick.”

  Jeremiah nodded absently, and even after all that had happened, all that he knew, I could see the sick longing in his eyes. It was in my heart, too. God, I knew I was right. I could feel those dark melodies pulling at me in that moment in an almost physical way, stirring in my gut like an edgy whirlwind, wanting to consume me, wanting to hurl me into the fire. I licked my lips, feeling the dread settle over me like a shroud as the final chapter of Jeremiah’s extraordinary tale began to unfold.

  Then

  One night, Aaron was startled awake by a sound. He had been dreaming dreadful dreams, of course, even after thirty years they were still with him, and would be, he supposed, for the rest of his life. That was not what woke him. That night, it seemed the nightmares were not confined to his head. They were there, in the bedroom with him.

  Eva was not in bed beside him. She was kneeling over by the window, her head bowed, her eyes closed, and there was some sort of fleshy sac surrounding her; she was totally encased in it, like a transparent bladder filled with viscous fluid. Neither the bladder, nor the fluid within, distorted Eva’s features, however, for Aaron could see her nakedness clearly through its transparency. Her hands rested atop a large and distended belly, that of a pregnant woman, and, using both hands, she was pushing down on the belly as if attempting to expel something from within it. This is when Aaron realized without a shadow of a doubt that Josef Mengele was the architect of their lives. He had been wielding influence over them since Auschwitz. He had done something to Eva all those years ago, some magic or spell that Eva had never been able to speak of, perhaps because she had had no real knowledge of its particularities, and now, since Mengele’s death, the magic was hastening toward fruition.

  Aaron sat up and called Eva’s name, but she made no sign that she’d heard him; she was in some sort of sleep-trance inside the fluid-filled sac, bent only on expelling the object that had distended her abdomen so dramatically.

  Getting up out of bed, Aaron crossed the room toward her. He had to stop abruptly, for below Eva, the floor began to iris open like the lens of a camera. Eva and the fleshy cocoon that shrouded her did not fall through the opening, however; instead they were suspended above it in some incomprehensible way. Shadows began to move across the sac, though there wasn’t sufficient enough light in the room to cast them. Inside the iris, beneath her, the darkness was so pervasive that the mere word made a mockery of its own definition.

  The source of the shadows became evident, for out of that infernal night a parade of atrocities began to unfurl. Aaron stood spellbound as emaciated souls writhed in flames and incinerated like doomed moths before his eyes. There were laughing men with grossly distorted features, their swastika-banded arms looped with human intestines; a child’s severed head hung from the rafters of some vast building, its milky eyes staring accusingly up at him.

  Aaron suddenly realized what this all meant. These were the atrocities of the death camps, of course, atrocities he had helped to perpetrate by his own complacency, but worse, his own cowardice. Yes, he had suffered, he had sacrificed, but not nearly as profoundly as most. He had eaten, been allowed to bathe, had a warm bed to lie down in. He had written terrible music for a terrible man and had made only one perfunctory attempt at escape, an attempt that had resulted in the murder of his own father.

  This was to be his punishment. He was convinced of that now. He was staring into the depths of Hell, but worse, Hell was staring back at him, beckoning for him to come and join in the celebration of eternal suffering.

  Eva writhed inside the fluid-filled sac now, pushing down hard on her abdomen. Again, Aaron called her name, shouting this time. To no avail. She could not hear him. He believed that if he made a move toward her, he would fall into that pit of horrors beneath her and become consumed by it.

  Above him, the ceiling seemed to shift. He glanced up and saw that it had disappeared altogether. In its place, the all-too-familiar winter skyline above the Auschwitz smokestacks came into view. It was a sight he had tried unsuccessfully all his life to forget. An electric-red sky glowed in the aftermath of a setting sun as diffused sienna-colored clouds drifted from the smokestacks and began to shape themselves into the vague form of a human head. From the head’s frontal lobes, giant ram’s horns protruded, spiraling back and ending in lethal points. Aaron fell back against the bed, an involuntary grunt of horror escaping him, for in that instant he recognized the form for what it was. The Angel of Death had somehow come back, seeking revenge. Dear God, it was true.

  Eva was suspended between those two points; the hellish atrocities below and the terrifying form of Josef Mengele’s horned head above. Death and darkness were all around her. It was all around them. Hadn’t it always been? Wasn’t this the lesson of their lives?

  “You should have listened to her,” Mengele said, as he stared down at Aaron with deeply hooded eyes. “You should have let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Aaron squinted up at the apparition. “Would it have made any difference if I had?”

  “When you found me in Brazil,” Mengele said, ignoring Aaron’s question, “did you not wonder why I came so willingly into your embrace of death?”

  “You were old and weary, like me. I imagined you knew that someday I’d come, and that I’d be bearing gifts of retribution.”

  “Yes, I always believed that. I also knew that it was past time for the games to begin afresh.”

  “Games? Games? Haven’t you had enough?”

  “Me?” Mengele gave a short laugh. “You waited your entire life for some word of my whereabouts. Don’t deny it. You could not wait to exact your pathetic revenge. I am not the only game player here.”

  Aaron stared up at the intimidating form. “What do you want?”

  “I’m surprised you have to ask.”

  “Please?”

  “I was sent here to erase the name of man from the earth. I was not given any particulars, only that I was to go forward in any way the task suited me, and regardless of the method used, I understood that failure was not an option.”

  “You’re a lunatic!” Aaron said, dismissing the apparition with a flap of his hand.

  “I was sent forth as flesh,” Mengele said, ignoring Aaron’s outburst. “So I assumed...”

  “What did you assume?”

  “Toward the end of the war, when I began to realize that time was short, and the opera would not be completed—”

  “You used Eva,” Aaron said.

  “I did not even know if I would survive, so, yes, instinct told me that Eva was my assurance that the promise would live on unto fulfillment. She was so beautiful, so vulnerable.”

  “What about Brawne?”

  “She could not give me what Eva could give me.”

  “So you butchered her.”

  “I did what was necessary.”

  “You stole our lives,” Aaron said.

  “I knew the moment I saw her—”

  “What did you know?”

  “That she had been sent to give birth to the promise. I did not have the talent to accomplish what needed to be done. This was clear. You did, but I understood that time was running out. So, there was only one thing I
could do.”

  Eva’s head rotated around inside the fleshy sac and she fixed her eyes coldly on Aaron, with so much burning hate. Even as her hands worked to expel the object that had distended her abdomen so dramatically, her hateful stare cut through Aaron’s heart like a lance.

  “Dear God, what have we done?” Aaron said.

  “It was you,” Eva shot back in rebuttal. “You and your cowardice. You did not even fight for me—”

  “I...couldn’t,” Aaron said. “You knew what it was like there. Impossible for any of us to fight.”

  “No, it was impossible to win. Never impossible to fight. That’s where you failed. That’s where we all failed. Josef took me and you never said a word. After a while, I began to enjoy flaunting it in your face. It did not have to happen, Aaron. You could have done something. Instead, you did nothing. Now it is time for both of us to pay the price.”

  “He’s dead,” Aaron said to Eva in way of explanation, pointing up at the horned creature above them. “I don’t care what he says, or how much he tries to intimidate us, I killed him with my own two hands. What we see here...all of this...none of it can be real...it’s some sort of illusion. I killed him, I tell you.”

  “No illusion,” the Mengele-thing said with a hearty laugh. “You made a monumental mistake in Brazil, you know. If you had just...killed me this might have all been prevented.”

  Aaron stared up at the man-creature dumfounded. “What are you saying?” he asked, but even as he mouthed the words, the truth wrenched a gasp from his throat. “What was I supposed to do?” he said.

  “What I wasn’t prepared for was the...manner in which you accomplished the act,” Mengele said. “I never would have guessed—”

  “That I could be so creative?”

  “No, I always knew you were creative.”

  “What then?”

  “That you could be so blatantly irreverent.”

  “You deserved it, you bastard. What did you think, that I’d open my arms in approbation?”

  “No, but I deserved better. You were treated well at Auschwitz. Don’t deny it.”

  “It was a death camp, run by barbarians!”

  “Visionaries!”

  “You arrogant bastard. You stole...everything from us! What gave you the right?”

  “We took what we wanted and you and your kind went like sheep to the slaughter. You were fools. Eva is right. You did not even fight us.”

  “We will never make that mistake again.”

  “It matters not, for the end is near.”

  “What are you talking about? The end?”

  “The end of everything. Do you not know what is happening to Eva?”

  Aaron shook his head bewildered.

  “Look.”

  Aaron’s mouth gaped open as Eva’s efforts began to bear fruit.

  “She is bringing forth The Angel of Death. Delivering the promise, Aaron. Have you not had to live all these years with it plaguing your lives?”

  The revelation struck Aaron so forcefully that he nearly fell over. Of course. All those nights with Mengele, Eva returning with that terrible thing in her eyes, that knowledge or infestation that was both prophetic and terrible. Mengele had been whispering more than sweet nothings in her ear. He and his kind—whatever sort of magicians or monsters they were—had been feeding her something evil, something that would take thirty years to come to fruition.

  Aaron heard Mengele laugh, even as the clouds that bore his ram’s-head image up began to dissipate. “Come back here!” Aaron commanded, as he took a step forward, reaching his hands out, trying to catch hold of one of the tatters in hopes of choking the last vestiges of life from the monster. Alas, it was too late. The Angel of Death had evaporated completely from the alien sky. These final words resounded in Aaron’s head as he went:

  “I will have my Holocaust Opera, Aaron...He will be the best of all three of us. He will have your talent, my determination, and Eva’s beauty and compassion. The world will never know until it is too late. Raise him and do him no harm. For he alone will have the power to destroy everything he surveys, including those who would stand in his way.”

  Eva was now screaming desperately and writhing like a lunatic inside the sac, which was now spinning like a whirlwind around her. The red sky sank toward the floor and was being fed into the swirling wind. The pit of atrocities rose up to meet the chaos, and the two melded together as one; like a rainbow inside a blender. Eva was lost in the violent turbulence.

  “Nooo!” Aaron screamed as he made a desperate grab for his vanishing wife. His footing seemed uncharacteristically fluid, however, and his step was not sure. The room seemed to widen and spread around him like a swirl of black ink. Aaron fell into the swirl, no longer able to hold his balance, or his consciousness for that matter, and for a moment, just before everything went dark, he was certain that he, too, was being consumed by the chaos.

  When he awoke, Eva was lying on the floor beside him, moaning. Her naked flesh was pale as marble and beaded with a fine lacing of sweat. A newborn child lay between her legs near the opening to her womb, the umbilical still attached. Aaron got to his hands and knees, staring in awe. He did not know if what he’d just experienced was a dream, a hallucination, or something worse. Whatever it had been, had brought forth a miracle. They now had a child to call their own. The particularities seemed inconsequential. On that night, Aaron made a vow that he would raise the child with goodness and mercy, teach him manners and grace, and with all of his will, he would sway him away from the darkness that had plagued their lives for so very long.

  Now

  Jeremiah stopped talking and hung his head as if shamed. My pent-up breath escaped me as if from a bellows. I had never been more astonished than I was at that moment. “Oh, God, no,” I said, totally and unequivocally shaken. “Jeremiah, I don’t believe it. You’re not the son of that monster. You’re not some...Angel of Death. I know you too well. You’re good, and you’re kind. That cruel man was none of those things.”

  “It’s true,” Jeremiah said. “All of it. I swear.”

  “But...how...? My God...how?”

  Jeremiah pointed at the pile of papers at our feet. “It’s all in there,” he said. “You can read it for yourself if you want. It was their parting gift to me, a gift of darkness. Besides, I know I’m not Aaron’s son. I couldn’t be. Like all of the men in the concentration camps, he was castrated within the first few weeks of his captivity. Somehow, I grew inside my mother for more than thirty years, and it took Mengele’s death for me to be born. I know it sounds preposterous, but it’s true. I’m not sure what I am, Roxanne. Perhaps some kind of monster.”

  “No, Jeremiah!” I said, kicking violently at the papers, scattering them across the floor. “You’re a man, a good and kind man. I don’t care what it says in that supposed confession. I don’t care what you’ve been made to believe.”

  Jeremiah absently touched the scar on his face, and I could see a small spark of hope glisten in his eyes.

  “What happened to Aaron’s muse, Jeremiah?”

  “After that night, the infected music never again haunted him or his dreams. It was as if some unspoken bargain had been struck between him and Mengele on the night I was born. You see, Mengele didn’t need him anymore. Now he had me.”

  “What about Brazil?” I said. “Why was that the catalyst that brought all of this to bear?”

  “On May 31, 1985, nearly six years after I was born, West German police raided the home of one of Mengele’s lifelong friends. Several letters from Mengele were seized and it was learned that Mengele was living in Brazil. Brazilian authorities were notified and within a week they had identified the family that had harbored Mengele all those years. The police raided the home and were told that Mengele had been murdered in his bed in September of 1979, and that
they had buried him in a lone grave on the property.

  When police asked how he had been murdered, the family would not say, only that they had never seen such a sight. The body was exhumed. What they found has never been made public.”

  “What did your father do to him, Jeremiah?”

  For a long moment, Jeremiah struggled to speak. His mouth worked and tears began coursing down his cheeks. “With ice picks,” he said finally, the words choking in his throat. “One in each ear. Just like Professor Friedman. They were still there, buried in the corpse’s skull when the body was exhumed.”

  “Oh...my...God!”

  “I never knew any of this until I was in my last year of college,” Jeremiah said. “You see, by that time I’d already become infected with the virus. As much as my parents tried to steer me in directions other than music, they couldn’t. The music was in me from the time of my conception, and it will always be in me. You see, Roxanne, it is a virus. I’ve no doubt of that now. Once it gets inside you, you can’t get it out. Like my father, in the beginning, I had no idea. I thought it was a gift and so did my professors. When Papa and Mama found out what I’d been doing, what I’d been composing, they nearly went mad. It was only then that I finally heard the true story of their ordeal in the death camps. I’d known they were holocaust survivors, I just hadn’t been told the details of their ordeal until then. Somehow, they thought that if they protected me from the truth, it would all just go away. I was so angry at them for the deception that I left, and it was weeks before I sorted it all out in my mind and decided to come back home and tell them that I was sorry. By then it was too late. I found them upstairs like that. I found their written confession. When I read it, and learned the circumstances of my birth, I thought I’d go crazy.

  “They said to leave the place in darkness, to lock it up after I left and to never return. That I would be safe as long as Mengele didn’t know they were dead.”

  “Maybe they didn’t do it to themselves, Jeremiah.”