by I V Olokita
“Well, you are the Head of the Department,” Heidi challenged him. “If you don’t know what was on your student’s syllabus, shouldn’t you retire?”
“Dear Heidi,” he smiled appeased. “You always come up with an answer to any question, don’t you?” he remarked, while she was already on her way to the bathroom.
“And what have you, Deus, learned today?” he addressed her accomplice.
“Today, too, professor, I have learned nothing about my family history,” Deus confessed, with frustration.
“Shut up!” Gabriel roared with fury. “Everything about that war and the world’s prewar history has a bearing on your parents’ and your own story as well. If you haven’t learnt anything, you probably weren’t listening in classes! So why shouldn’t you kick the habit of lying on the lawns and chasing my wife as if you want her to quench your desires?!”
Deus fell silent, forgetting for a moment all the unanswered questions he was about to ask. Despite realizing the professor had every right to scold him, he also acknowledged he couldn’t resist Heidi’s begging to spend some time with her the next day.
“You’re right, professor,” Deus said with resignation, “I promise to stop missing classes and be much more attentive,” he made a pledge, retiring to his room.
During two days afterwards, Deus tried to mend his ways. At first, he carefully got to the classroom just a moment before the lectures started, so the only vacant seat left would be away from Heidi. Then, realizing she wouldn’t let go of him, he persuaded the academic secretariat to change his curriculum, straightforwardly explaining that the Professor wanted him to stay away from her. Yet Heidi never let go of any prize she set her sights on, certainly not one looking like my only son. Near the end of their last school year, she finally succumbed to the passion consuming her ever since she met him back then, by the taxi stop. If she were true to herself, she could have saved both the shameful act she was about to commit. Yet Heidi could not contain her lust any longer. The moment the lecture was over, she tracked Deus down in the corridor, between lectures. Grabbing him by the shirt with one hand, she opened the maintenance cabinet, dragging him inside it. The cabinet door slammed behind them, while other students, whose desire was knowledge, passed by, as if unaware of the scene.
The engulfing darkness numbed them for a moment, but Heidi probed for the inner lamp’s switch and pulled it to spread a cozy light in the cabinet. Deus looked at her, facing her bashful look. She grabbed both palms of his hands, fondling him with her fingers, and then bent over him to kiss his lips. Startled by her advances, Deus withdrew a little to detach his lips from hers.
“I thought…,” he started, yet she put a long finger over his mouth right away.
“Some things are better unsaid,” she whispered in his ear. “Let’s keep it secret from him since you will leave me soon, anyway,” she pledged, with him only nodding back in approval of this sinful act. Heidi came near him once again, her heart throbbing, her arms encircling him to secure him.
“No, I don’t think so…,” Deus decided, withdrawing from her abruptly, the cold sweat droplets on his forehead forcing him to run for his life. “I am claustrophobic,” he excused himself with a lie, storming outside.
That night, he came home late, finding the professor expecting him on the couch.
“Heidi told me everything,” the professor said with embarrassment, with his eyes down.
“My apologies,” Deus replied, casting his eyes down as if to conceal a truth just uncovered.
“You have nothing to apologize for, it was all my fault. If I didn’t keep you holding your breath expecting, you wouldn’t have wished to abandon the tree before the fruits ripen,” he said, standing up as if he wanted to hug Deus.
“Do you mean…,” Deus stuttered, “Do you mean Heidi told you I want to quit?”
“She did,” the professor confirmed. “It seems you wish to flee for good before you get a chance to connect all the dots to get your complete life story. She told me you’re sick and tired of studying, grasping nothing of what you’ve studied, and cannot see what it has to do with your parents’ history.”
Deus uttered a sigh of relief. “So, what do you suggest, professor?” Deus went on, pretending it was all premeditated.
“I suggest you should attend my lecture one more time before quitting, and then make up your mind.”
“Please be quiet, we would like to begin!” the department secretary begged the audience while Professor Balaguer was ascending the podium.
“Dear students, I was greatly honored to give you the last lecture before you graduate from your BA program, in World War 2 course. The course of wars, naturally, cannot be changed once they go down in history. Therefore, I first intended to give you the very same lecture I give every year to students who are about to graduate. Yet fate had other plans for you and me. About three years ago, in my neighborhood police station, I was shown two pictures which entirely shook the concept of World War 2 history we had so far.” He stopped talking to take a sip of water, evidently excited from the facts he was about to reveal. “This picture,” Gabriel went on, while projecting the earlier-taken picture on the slide screen, “taken in the midst of the suppression of Warsaw Ghetto uprising, shows a man and a woman, each wearing a different uniform. Don’t get me wrong, gentlemen: these two individuals are unrelated to each other whatsoever!” he remarked with a dramatic tone, and then started whispering. “We, experts, presumed the woman was killed by local Jews, as an act of revenge. We failed to track down the man in the picture, who commanded Udenspul death camp, although he probably followed many of his fellow commandants, running for his life from Germany to settle in South America.” Gabriel took some more sips of water. “History sometimes mocks us, historians, in its own peculiar way. Three years ago, a student named Deus entered this university. Stand up, Deus, and come here,” the professor called him excitedly, and all the students’ eyes were fixed on him. Deus blushed with embarrassment. “What was so special about Deus except for his divine name?” the lecturer went on, while the former was on his way to the podium. “Well, if it wasn’t for him, we would have never learnt that both this man and that woman survived the war!” he exclaimed with a trembling voice, projecting the later picture right away.
“Wow!” the audience cried with amazement, applauding Deus when he took his stand on the podium.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, the father of the courageous man standing in front of you is no other than that scum who proudly titled himself ‘the God of Udenspul Jews’, while his mother….” He went on, quietly: “is no other than that notorious Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Police officer, who led so many Jewish mothers and daughters to their doom, deceiving them all with words and deeds: Klara Weinstein!”
“Liar!” Deus shouted, withdrawing from the stage backwards, as if chased. “That’s a lie! My mother was the very embodiment of mercy in this world, always smiling to the world…,” he kept shouting.
“Calm down, Deus!” the professor hissed at him, securing him in place with a grip on his hand. “This is the historical truth, whether you like it or not, and it’s no fault of yours. Bear in mind, Deus, that if it wasn’t for your birth, we would have been going about our business ignorantly, with no right to avenge all the millions who died…”
Deus didn’t hear him out or have any intention to wait for the generations to come to take their revenge. Instead, he just gripped on the professor’s hand, forcing him to let go of his own, and then forced his legs off the stage, sprinting towards the campus main entrance, and left it to never come back.
Deus made the entire journey back home to Rio silently, this time traveling light, leaving his luggage and the pictures at the professor’s house. Shrugging on his airplane seat, he just stared at the blue heaven, covering the window with his steaming breath.
Poor Deus never suffered a surprise as nasty as this one: hav
ing waited three long years for this opportunity, all the horrors attributed to his mother, as well as some attributed to me he had never heard of before, just hit him out of the blue.
“Heidi,” he murmured, in a vain attempt to visualize her to suppress all other thoughts. “Were you here and now, you would know how to comfort me!”
“Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s your captain speaking,” the loudspeaker sharply disrupted Deus’ thoughts, and he listened to it eagerly. It was only now he noticed the plane rolled and shook violently. “Due to unstable weather, you may experience some shaking, please remain seated and fasten your seat belts immediately.”
Only flying for the second time ever, Deus panicked, which made him sit up and attempt buckling up with shaky hands.
“Hello!” she greeted him, taking the nearby seat while he was preoccupied with futile attempts to secure himself.
“Hello back,” Deus uttered absentmindedly, not bothering to look up at her.
“Need any help?” she wondered, fastening her seat belt skillfully.
“No, madam. I’m fine,” Deus declined her offer, finally raising his head.”
“I guess you don’t know me, right?” she went on, making him shake his head and turn towards the window. “How can I drive it home to her I’m not in the mood for chat right now?!” he thought.
“Do you know?” she chattered on, ruthlessly disregarding his evident suffering, “Once upon a time, many years ago, I and my late husband used to fly to Brazil a lot on business. However, it had been long ago, before you were even born, young man,” she remarked, with a hoarse laugh. “Well, we kept going to Brazil on business afterwards, too, but this was a very different kind of business!”
Deus gave her a look and smiled out of courtesy.
“I understand there’s nothing on your mind right now except your humiliation,” that lady went on, rising to offer an apology. “But let me tell you this, young man: your father was a hero and you have nothing to be ashamed of, certainly not of the services he rendered the Fatherland!”
Deus’ jaw dropped while he watched that mysterious lady walking away to take a seat at the farthest end of the plane, and then he returned his eyes to the window. The light faded away until the entire plane was shrouded with darkness. Ironically, at that moment Deus mustered all his resolution to rise and go searching for her, come what may.
“Please sit down, sir!” the air hostess demanded, kindly but firmly, once she noticed he stood up.
“I only wanted…,” Deus attempted to explain, but a violent rolling of the plane hurled him back to his seat.
“See? You could have hurt yourself, sir!” the air hostess remarked with a triumphant smile. “Anyway, we’ll be landing shortly,” she concluded, pushing away the dinner trolley along the aisle.
Once the plane touched the runway, Deus unbuckled his safety belt, popping out of his seat. “There’s no way,” he said, “I’ll let her slip away!” so he sneaked behind her all the way through the airport terminal, watching her pull her wheeled silver-colored suitcase which scratched the terminal’s marble floor, until she mounted a black luxury car waiting for her with an open door at the entrance.
“Madam!” Deus cried with despair, chasing the car in an attempt to chat with her a little more.
“Halt, Mein Herr!” he heard, feeling a massive hand gripping his neck, nearly choking him. Looking up with horror, he saw a large man in a tuxedo with ivory-white buttons standing above him. The stranger’s lapel almost touched his goatee, partly covering the tattoo on the right of his neck: a skull surrounded with a laurel wreath. A fresh graduate of a WW2 history course, Deus immediately recognized it to be the emblem of ODESSA, a Nazi fugitive group rumored to have been wiped out a decade ago. Meanwhile, running out of air, Deus grunted. Noticing that, the bully gripped his throat even tighter with his leather-gloved hand. With his remaining ounce of strength, Deus tried to force his hand off his sweat-flooded neck.
“Would Mein Herr get away from the car?” the bully demanded suddenly, in German. Deus tried to gesture he would comply if he only let him breathe a little. Suddenly he released Deus’ neck, letting him fall facing the ground. Deus heaved a little, attempting to restore his breath, and then, looking upwards, he saw the car driving away.
“Dad? Are you here?” Deus called, stepping hesitantly and warily into his parents’ home, which he had left merely three years before, receiving no response. Turning on the light in the entrance corridor, he advanced further inside, exploring the dark rooms, to discover the house was deserted and all its contents gone. While Deus was leaping quickly upstairs, his fear of having to face his family history demons gradually faded. Opening his room door wide, he stepped in and turned the light on. It remained exactly as he remembered it from the day he had left. He even saw the same old satin sheet on his bed. He lay down, covering himself with the thick blanket, to rest not only from that day’s adventure but from all the nasty surprises he had been experiencing for all these years. His eyelids dropped gradually, letting him fall asleep.
“Senhor,” he heard, feeling a stranger’s hand on his shoulder.
“Stop it, Mom!” Deus begged her to leave him alone, as she used to do whenever he got up too late for school.
“Senhor, please come with me to the police station!” the stranger insisted loudly.
Opening his eyes slowly, Deus received the thin sunrays, which infiltrated the room allowing him to see with increasing clarity how a police officer in uniform was handcuffing his right hand while forcing him to stand up with his other hand.
“Senhor, I arrest you for committing a burglary!” the officer declared.
“Why should I commit it, mister officer?” Deus burst with a cry. “This is my parents’ home, to which I have a key. So, I have no reason to break into it!”
“Interestingly,” the police officer went on, “the property owner filed a complaint against you for entering his house without his permission, claiming he doesn’t even know you, but we’ll figure it out in the station.”
“Well, I’ve got good news, and bad,” the duty officer informed Deus when he leaned against the desk separating him from the detention cells. “The good news is that if you keep pressing my desk this way, policeman Joao, on your left, yes, the one with that lovely smile, will give you such a clubbing, you will most probably have no memories of our hospitality. The bad news is that once you regain your senses, you’ll get a hell of a headache!”
Startled, Deus leaped away from the helpdesk.
“Good!” the duty officer said, smiling with satisfaction. He liked his perpetrators to be obedient and quick learners. As a greenhorn, he still believed all detainees to be ignoramuses, scums of the earth and lost souls. However, over the years he had learnt that even individuals as sensible as himself can occupy a pride of place behind bars. Therefore, when asking the fresh detainee, “See that man over there?” he addressed him with all due respect.
“He’s Janusz Nusiant,” Deus told him furiously “I will never forget his face since he stole my wallet on board an airplane three years ago!”
“Isn’t he your father?” the duty officer verified.
“Certainly not!” Deus made things clear.
“So why did you claim his house belonged to your father?” he pressed on.
“Because…because,” Deus attempted to excuse himself, but was overwhelmed with all the chaotic thoughts invading his mind.
“Detention!” the duty officer commanded, disappointed. Now, Deus, too, joined the gallery of low lives inspected by him night by night.
“Just a moment, officer!” Deus suggested. “May I have a word with my accuser?”
The police officer stood still, looking at the duty officer. So, did Janusz, who nodded in response.
“No, you may not!” The duty officer commanded, turning back to his desk, while Deus was hurled violen
tly to the crammed detention hall.
Deus would probably remember with horror, for the rest of his life, the time he spent in Rio 27 station. I can offer no other reason for him hugging me most affectionately the moment I came there the next day to bail him out.
“Dad…,” the young man attempted to offer an apology, yet I interrupted him right away.
“Later,” I suggested. “It’s unsafe here!”
“Somebody is trying to make my life hell!” I started, once we sat down in a quiet café, a short drive from the station.
“Was this the reason you moved?” the young man asked.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I muttered angrily.
“It matters a lot!” Deus retorted, a little excited.
“I don’t remember you ever getting so upset,” I flattered him sarcastically, smiling at him.
“Dad, whom did you sell your house to? Was his name Janusz?” Deus pressed on, pretending to care about me.
“I believe it was,” I replied. “However, I never got to see him, concluding the deal with a middleman.”
“He was the very same man who sat next to me on board the plane three years ago and stole my wallet. He had already got me arrested twice, first in the United States and now, in Brazil!”
“Well, it’s your blood he’s after, not mine,” I betrayed my relief.
“No, Dad! It’s you he’s after, as well as many others, all those who figured out that Herr Klaus Holland, the supposedly dead war criminal, is alive and well!”
“Hold it!” I interrupted him, “Can you please say his name again?.” Despite my desperate attempts to ignore everything this youth knew about my secret past, I was overwhelmed with shame and fear.
“Janusz Nusiant, and he is just one of many who knows who you are…” Deus explained, eager to satisfy my curiosity.
“I don’t give a damn about others!” I cut him short impatiently. “Only about those driven to take a personal revenge on me!”
Deus gripped his drinking straw with his lips, emptying with one gulp the cup of milkshake in front of him, and then he grabbed the cherry on the bottom and swallowed it whole.
