A Perfect Madness

by Frank H. Marsh

FIVE

  We are all equal at our beginnings. But only for a moment. Then we become what history has long promised we must be. A few do escape, though, grabbed at birth by other gods promising a different destiny. The rest remain to struggle with what awaits them. Such was Julia and her family’s promises given by history. The ancient Hebrew blood of her ancestors flowed through every vein in Julia’s body, leaving no other course but that which was about to come.

  Standing next to Julia, Erich’s eyes focused on the official announcement recently posted by the university barring all Jewish students henceforth from the university, including the medical school. Before Julia could finish reading the devastating news herself, derisive cheers began to break out from the Sudeten students when they saw her with Erich.

  “Get out, go, Jew, back to your filthy hole where you belong.”

  Erich quickly took Julia’s hand, leading her outside into a small courtyard and then away from the campus. The German university’s decision to dismiss all Jewish students was not unexpected. During the hot summer months, he had huddled almost nightly with Julia and her family around their radio, listening to the growing thunder of the Third Reich, now no longer distant, demanding autonomy for the Sudetenland. Nothing changed, though, until the following spring, when the Austrian Anschluss fell from the darkening clouds gathering over Prague like a thunderbolt hurled by Ares, the Greek god of war. No one spoke. There was nothing to discuss. But Julia glanced hurriedly at Erich to capture his face, as if it would be the last time they would be together.

  At first, Erich refused to return to the university without Julia, insisting that were he to do so, it would be tantamount to accepting the newly adopted anti-Semitic policies. Instead, Dr. Kaufmann urged, he must become a voice of reason within the university, crying out at every opportunity against the rising sea of hatred now threatening to engulf all of Prague as it had Germany. He would do so, Erich promised Dr. Kaufmann, and do it well.

  Monday morning at the university came slowly to Erich and the other students, as if history had decided to sit down and rest, perhaps to catch its breath and look around one last time before stepping into the smoldering fire waiting patiently for it. Sitting down in the main lecture hall, Erich glanced quickly around the room before realizing that he was alone in his row of twelve seats. No one sought his company, nor would they in the weeks ahead. The Jewish students were gone as well, and most of the non-German Czech students. The ones remaining now professed their own carefully rehearsed allegiance to Germany. Later Erich would say to Julia and her father, “The bugs are sneaking out of their holes.”

  Two weeks passed before Erich felt comfortable with the drastically changed student body. Everyone knew of his continuing relationship with Julia, but said nothing to him, as if waiting for a signal to do so. Then it happened. The wild shouts of the Sudeten German students rang out across the campus, their stamping feet echoing down every hall as they emptied the university buildings. Screaming on the airwaves, Hitler had promised that the liberation of the “oppressed” Sudeten Germans was near and that the Sudeten National Socialist Party would lead the way. Having left the empty classroom, Erich walked across the street and sat down on a curbside bench and looked back at the campus walkways filling with shouting students gathering throughout the university. The sound and fury unfolding across the campus became deafening, much like what he had witnessed years back with his father at Berlin University. It was then that the mind of reason began to weep as great bonfires began devouring a thousand books of knowledge, sending their ashes high into the night sky, never to be read again. The sight before Erich was little different than what he imagined the ancient German tribal warriors looked like as they danced in a frenzied madness around their fires at night. Even his father seemed moved by the burning of such knowledge. Years later, though, when asked by Erich about the dark night and the burning of the books, he could hardly recall it.

  Before the students could move across the different streets ringing the campus to demonstrate their joy by smashing the store windows of all known Jews, the Prague police arrived and cordoned off the campus until a controlled calmness took hold of the students. One by one, the rowdiest were forced to line up in a long row and wait on the police captain to take down their names before hauling them off to the central office. As the captain, a lean and timid-looking man wearing tiny spectacles, started down the line of students, he stopped abruptly in front of the tall, blond Sudeten German student. “Name?” the captain asked meekly, noticing the National Socialist Party armband on the student.

  “Franz Kremer.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Are you a student at the university?”

  “No, but I will be again when the Führer comes to Prague,” Franz answered in a voice loud enough for Erich, who was sitting directly across the street from him, to hear clearly the threatening words.

  At the sound of Franz’s voice shouts of approval rolled down the line of students like the rumbling of distant thunder. Fixing a freezing stare on the captain, Franz continued, “Now is the time for you and your men to take a stand. You are either with us or against us. And rest assured, we will remember you when the given day comes.”

  Looking across the street at Erich, he screamed, “You piece of dog dung. You lover of Jewish devils. Hell will not be big enough to hold the Jews when we’re through with them.”

  Erich tried to smile at Franz’s words, but couldn’t. He knew such words were no longer empty boasts, but would soon be filled with the gaseous insanity of intolerance already sweeping into Czechoslovakia and the rest of the Eastern European states. Later he would come to believe it had always been there, hidden from ages past by brittle bits of reason, waiting for the right moment to show its face again. Erich turned away, leaving the police captain to wrestle with his own courage in the face of Franz’s warning.

  After a twenty-minute walk that carried him through the Old Town square and across the Charles Bridge to Mala Strana, he entered a small coffeehouse sitting at the edge of the Vltava River and made his way to an empty table. The coffeehouse was number two on the list of his and Julia’s favorite places, because at nighttime they could stroll unseen to a host of hidden places along the banks of the great river to talk and make love. Many times they would simply lie for hours entwined in each other’s arms listening to the gurgling waters passing nearby, or to the soft voices of other young lovers seeking their own Eden among the heavy shrubs and foliage growing at the edge of the river. Other times they would talk, always pretending, about their future life together, children and doctoring and maybe leaving Prague, but never about what they knew was sure to come.

  Erich sipped the strong black coffee and wished he had a cigarette to help calm the angst squeezing his body and mind with its paralyzing fingers. Surely as he stood there looking at the police captain and Franz, he knew Franz was right. The Sudeten Germans would be yanked free from the Czechs at Munich in a matter of days, and Prague would soon follow in a few months.

  Erich sighed audibly. It seemed no one, not himself, nor even the great powers, had the stomach to defend anymore what was good. Duty to the state had become paramount to truth, when it should be the other way around. He was witnessing the wrenching birth of a monster that would kill its mother. Prague would soon be dead.

  Erich studied his empty coffee cup like a seer reading tea leaves, hoping to find an answer to the promise that history had in store for him. For the first time in his life he felt frightened over his very own existence, not just Julia’s and her family’s. He decided that he must go to Julia and persuade her to leave with him now, as they had talked about, and if not with him, with her father and family. They could travel south with other Jewish refugees making their way to Palestine, or to Lisbon, or the Netherlands.

  But he had nothing, only the meager allowance his father was still willing to provide each month, even though they had not spoken from the day his father’s terrifying
position on treatment of the Jews became known. Erich sighed again, only louder, causing patrons at a nearby table to glance his way. He knew the Health Ministry would soon begin calling in all the young German doctors for service, too, and his name would be on the list when he graduated. For now, there really was no clear way open for him to escape what history had promised him.

  Fifteen minutes after leaving the café, Erich knocked on Julia’s front door. As soon as she opened the door, he could tell she had been crying, because crying to her was a constant distant thing, never to be expected from the way she grabbed and took hold of life every conscious second of the day. There wasn’t a moment of living that she regretted. “They were given moments,” she would say, “and that makes them holy.” So Erich was puzzled by the watery sadness in her eyes. Hearing his familiar knock, Julia had rushed to wipe away the outpouring of tears brought on by the humiliation her father had faced earlier in the afternoon while seeking the company of his colleagues at the University café.

  Dr. Kaufmann was sitting alone in his study, facing the small front window, watching the last light of the day grow gray. It was always a special time of day to inhale what God has given us, he would tell Julia and her brother Hiram. And together the three would watch the evening shadows grow bold with descending shades of darkness and shapes until there was only blackness. For Julia and Hiram, though, it was not the glory of God that filled their eyes with wonder, but the tugging on the imagination as they eagerly sought out the faces and monsters of the world hidden among the moving shadows. Not every day, but some, Julia would find the stoic face of Rabbi Loew’s golem staring back at her before quickly fading into another strange form. But now she saw nothing, the face of the golem having vanished along with her childhood dreams.

  Dr. Kaufmann did not turn around when Erich and Julia entered the study. He was lost now in the past, wandering somewhere with his ancient fathers who, so many times, had been cast from Prague like lepers of old. He had taken Julia with him for a late afternoon lunch and coffee with a mixed group of Czech writers and medical colleagues, all old friends, at the University café. Entering the café, Dr. Kaufmann took Julia by the arm and walked towards a large table around which sat four men and a woman. There were no empty chairs awaiting him and Julia. Dr. Kaufmann also noticed the absence of his two Jewish friends who usually dined with them. No one looked at them as they neared the silent group. Before he could speak, Dr. Polacek, a professor of anatomy at Charles University, looked up at Dr. Kaufmann and Julia, and in a cold rehearsed tone said, “Do not sit down with us. You are no longer welcome here.”

  “I don’t understand. We are Czechs and old friends, not Germans,” Dr. Kaufmann stammered, clearly stunned by Professor Polacek’s words. All the people seated before him, though, stared at their plates, none daring to look at him and Julia. He had become a leper.

  Without looking up, Professor Polacek repeated his admonishment to Dr. Kaufmann. “Once, yes, but not now. You must leave us alone. Go away.”

  Before Dr. Kaufmann could respond, Julia tugged on her father’s arm, turning him away from the table to face her.

  “Come with me, Father,” she said, taking him by the hand. “Believe me, no one here is worthy of breaking bread with you.”

  Then Julia looked at her father’s old friends, all sorely shamed by their disavowal of his presence with them. She knew them all well, had played with their children and dined in their homes and sat in their university classes when she grew to womanhood; yet a lifetime of friendship had wilted and died this day because the sun had disappeared from the broad skies over Prague.

  “Cowards! All of you,” she said in a loud voice, causing those around to look at her, and then at the table of professors whose faces were paled with fright, none daring to watch their friend leave.

  Dr. Kaufmann meekly followed Julia to the door, saying nothing. Nor did he speak again during their long walk home from the coffeehouse. After entering the house, he went straight to the study, turned his chair around to face the window and sat down. Three hours later, when Erich arrived, Julia brought him into the study, hoping to break through the spell that had captured her father, who still had not spoken or moved. Urged on by Julia, Erich tried to initiate a dialogue about nothing with Dr. Kaufmann to have him question the silliness of his thoughts as he always did. But nothing came. Nothing in the silence that followed. And soon Erich quit trying. The professor, now suddenly grown old from hurt, continued sitting in silence long after Erich left, no longer looking at the close of day and the sights he loved, but staring blindly into an emptiness that covered his window with a terror heretofore unknown to him and his family.

  Mrs. Kaufmann brought a sandwich and a glass of milk for her husband and set them down quietly on his desk. Reaching to him, she gently touched his neck, then left the room, leaving Julia alone with her father.

  Julia continued trying to break into her father’s mind, speaking to him softly every few minutes at first, then yelling in frustration, something she had never done, not even as a child. Still he remained away from her world, staying as silent as a fieldstone. Refusing to leave him alone, Julia curled up in the soft cushioned chair facing his desk and drifted off to sleep. Falling asleep in the huge chair was a loving ritual for her that had begun when she could barely climb into it. It was there, in the years that followed, that she would listen for hours until she grew sleepy to intense eclectic discussions by her father and his colleagues on matters of the mind and body. Their strange, long words meant little to her, and it was her father’s face and eyes that she would always watch. They spoke his passion for the subject and for life itself, in a way that words could never capture. All this was missing now in her father. The great winds of life that had filled his sails for so long had stilled. He seemed as nothing.

  Hours later Mrs. Kaufmann stroked Julia’s cheek to awaken her, as she would do when Julia was a child. Looking around, Julia saw the empty chair where her father had been sitting, still facing the window. Before she could say anything, her mother said, “Father left for the university to meet with the rector.”

  “Alone? The Munich Dictate is to be signed today freeing Sudeten from the Republic. There will be trouble, I’m sure,” Julia said frantically, jumping up from the chair.

  “Your brother is with him. They will be fine. Your father is an honored professor there.”

  Julia rushed to the kitchen, doused her face in cold water and, ignoring the wrinkled clothes she had slept in, hurriedly left to walk the short distance to Charles University, hoping to find her father and Hiram.

  But Dr. Kaufmann had turned away at the last minute from his intended mission at the university to hurry to the American and British Embassies to request visas. Though many Jewish friends had already done so, and many had left Prague, he had never given thought to his family leaving Prague—it would have meant surrendering all he believed in. Yet he had wrestled with it from the moment the cruel insults were hurled at him in front of Julia in the café. Keeping it bottled up inside for the unspoken hours that followed, the decision to do so escaped him until he recalled, as he walked with Hiram towards the university, the rotund flushed face of Ladislav Simek, his dearest friend, who had been sitting at the table, too ashamed to look at him or Julia. Boyhood mates, they had sat side by side throughout their school years, even through medical school, separating at the end only in their chosen specialties. If Ladislav wouldn’t raise his voice to defend him, then who would?

  “Can’t we wait to see what will happen, Father?” Hiram asked, unsure about his father’s sudden decision.

  “No, Hiram, there will be no more springtime for us in Prague.”

  ***