From the Ashes

by Sandra Saidak

  “But for everyone on earth who isn’t infected—we have the vaccine, Adolf! Polio is beaten!”

  For a long while, Adolf just stood there, staring at Mirielle’s grave, absorbing the doctor’s words. Finally he said, “The vaccine: did you get it from…?”

  “From sleepless nights of research; from crazy ideas from that Varina character; from tissue samples from the Africans, and yes, Adolf: from the influenza research that American Jew started seventy years ago. I couldn’t have done it without him—or you.”

  Adolf slowly unclenched his fists, and repeated the words he had spoken just moments before: “Unto thee O Lord, do I lift up my soul. I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me."

  Speer nodded. “Whoever that god of theirs was, or is,” he said, “I’d sure like to have him on my side.” He took Adolf by the arm and led him away. “Come on, young man. Your vaccine awaits. After all this, I’m not about to let you turn into the last casualty of this charnel house.”

  The next morning, Adolf, Varina, Jacques and Speer sat together at breakfast.

  “It’s drastic,” said Speer. “It’s unethical. I just don’t see any other way.”

  “Well, I don’t see what’s so drastic—or unethical,” said Varina. “Of course we have to keep this vaccine out of the Party’s hands! You know what they’ll do with it!” Her eyes narrowed on Adolf. “You, especially, rich boy. They’ll inoculate all loyal party members, and a few docile populations of peasants and slaves—then sit back and wait while this disease kills or cripples anyone they consider a threat.”

  “They may not sit back and wait,” said Jacques. “Things are getting out of hand for the leaders. There have been uprisings in dozens of labor camps. Underground and partisan activity has been reported on every continent. Once they have the vaccine, they’ll probably decide it’s more efficient to introduce the polio virus directly into the food or water supply of any undesirable area.”

  Adolf’s gut twisted inside him, but he refused to budge. “And if we use it as a weapon of the underground? How are we any different from them? The four of us? We’re going to decide who lives and who dies? On a planetary scale?”

  “It won’t be just us four!” said Varina. “You said it yourself, and so has Jacques: the underground is everywhere! We can distribute it to every leader! Every partisan group! Eventually, it will reach everyone the Party would have allowed to die.”

  “Party members have children, too!” said Adolf. “Are you willing to condemn them all for the sins of their parents?”

  “It’s the word ‘eventually’ that bothers me, Varina,” said Speer. “Although I see Adolf’s point as well. We’ve already seen how miserably inefficient Nazi efficiency has become over the years. Consider how much worse the distribution of the vaccine will be in the hands of dozens of squabbling underground organizations—“

  “I trust them over the Party,” said Varina.

  “Whatever we decide has to be soon,” said the doctor. “The autopsies for Jacques and the other Africans are already ten days overdue.”

  “For which we are grateful,” murmured Jacques.

  “I’ve stalled for as long as I can. Very soon now, someone will arrive to investigate, and all this lovely philosophy will become moot.”

  Four pairs of eyes glowered at each other.

  “Let me suggest something,” Adolf said suddenly. “We evacuate the camp today as planned. We take the vaccine, and the formula, and distribute them far and wide. But we leave behind all the notes; enough to ensure that—eventually—the Party doctors will have the vaccine as well.”

  “I would agree to that,” said Speer.

  Jacques shrugged.

  Varina eyed Adolf coldly. “I hope you realize that from every batch of ‘innocent Aryan children’ you save, there will grow another Mengele; another Himmler.”

  “Or perhaps,” said Adolf, “Another like you or Jacques or the doctor here. Or maybe even the messiah that the Jews waited for all those years.”

  Varina snorted.

  “We have to get moving,” said Speer. “We have two working vehicles, which should be enough to transport all those who can’t walk—“

  “Thanks to last night’s little cyanide party,” snapped Adolf.

  “It was their choice, Adolf,” Varina said quietly. “We have no safe place to take them; no hope to offer for any life at all, outside the underground—and even that’s going to be risky for those of us making the attempt. Can you blame them for not wanting to be here when the Party ‘physicians’ arrive to take care of the situation?”

  “Still,” he said bitterly. “In time, there might have been a cure; a treatment—“

  “In time, there will be,” said Dr. Speer. “Especially, if those of us in this room live to do what we’re meant to. If we can get Jacques back to Africa with the vaccine, he just might be able to stir up a continent. Varina’s brain will very soon be classified as a lethal weapon—wherever she chooses to take it. And your voice, Adolf, along with this ancient faith you’ve discovered, might just be enough to turn the world upside down.”

  “You didn’t mention yourself, doctor,” said Jacques.

  “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?” said Adolf.

  Speer smiled sadly. “I’m afraid I’m a bit old to play revolutionary. When they come, I’ll be waiting.”

  “No!” cried the others—the first thing they had agreed on all morning.

  “They’ll kill you,” said Adolf.

  “Until a moment ago, I was perfectly content to die covering your escape. Actually, Adolf, it was your plan to let the Party have the vaccine that gave me this idea.

  “I did quite a lot of theater in school. If I can convince them I was overpowered and left unconscious during your great escape, I may yet live to add ‘creation of a fifth column’ to my resume. And, since you’ve all agreed to leave our research notes, I’ll have a bargaining chip. As the sole creator of the polio vaccine, I might even have a shot at reinstatement.”

  Varina flashed an obscene gesture toward the doctor, but Adolf just smiled.

  The sun was still low above the eastern hills when the last forty residents of the Lourdes Polio Colony gathered for a farewell. The half who were visibly crippled huddled in a group near the trucks that would take them on a search for sanctuary; for someplace that wouldn’t “mercifully” end their sufferings, and the discomfort felt by those taught to hate anyone with physical differences. Varina, Adolf noticed, was not among them.

  The others stood in small groups, their few belongings piled around them. It would be dangerous for everyone: by slipping away without official permission, they would all be fugitives. No one seemed terribly bothered by the notion, Adolf thought as he stood before them, to address them one last time.

  As he opened his book, he heard the familiar grate of Varina’s crutch and footstep behind him. He paused to wait for her.

  “Decided to attend the service after all?” he asked.

  Varina shrugged. “Everything I’ve read about the Jews tells me they treated women just as badly as the Nazis do. But I’ve decided that you don’t. If you do manage to create a new world Adolf, tell me one thing: will you alter this religion enough to make it equal for everyone?”

  “I won’t have to,” said Adolf. “I’ll have you there, to make sure it never becomes an issue.”

  Varian smiled, and then hobbled over to stand with Dr. Speer.

  “Jewish tradition,” Adolf began, “is filled with references to new beginnings; to the scattering of seeds.

  “What we few begin today, could turn out to be the greatest new beginning of all. We set out with nothing—nothing that is, except a vaccine that could change the face of the world. And as you scatter your tiny seeds of life and hope, remember that you are doing what no Aryan superman is capable of doing. You will be holding faith with life; giving of yourselves so that total strangers, of no immediate use to you, will live.


  “You will be doing the work of God—whatever you conceive Him—“ He glanced at Varina. “—or Her to be.”

  Adolf pointed to the west, where a pale rainbow faded in the aftermath of a predawn rain. “Even now, God gives us a sign. ’I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.’

  “The cloud that stretches over the world today is a dark one. But always, people of faith have endured, to greet the sun once more. Let us take the rainbow as a sign of our eventual triumph.”

  They prayed then, and soon after people began to leave.

  “I remember a saying from my childhood,” Varina said. “I see now that it came from that story about the flood. ‘And the lord hung a rainbow as a sign. Won’t be flood, but fire next time.’ Adolf, my friend, you may very well have lit the spark that sets that fire.”

  Adolf nodded. He wished he knew whether to rejoice, or quake with fear.

  Book III

  CHAPTER 17

  “’And the Lord called unto Moses and spoke unto him out of the taba…taber…?’” The little boy looked up from the huge volume spread across his lap, a familiar look of fear creeping into his eyes.

  “Tabernacle,” said Adolf. “It’s a hard word, Daniel. Don’t worry, you’re doing fine.”

  “What’s a tabernacle?” asked one of the bolder children.

  “It was the tent that covered the Ark of the Covenant,” said Adolf. He smiled at the smaller boy. “Go on, Daniel.”

  Daniel continued reading from the book of Leviticus. When he stopped, Adolf and the other children applauded. Adolf looked up at his guests with a proud smile, which faded when he saw their expressions.

  “It’s all very interesting, Rabbi,” said the leader of the delegation. “But how is teaching a bunch of missgeburt to read going to win this revolution?”

  Adolf strove for patience. The twenty-five youngsters in the room became very still, willing themselves invisible, as they always did when they sensed tension among those who controlled their fate.

  “These children are not missgeburt, Walter,” he said. “Every one of them was declared mentally defective at birth! Uneducable, and suited for only the basest forms of labor. When we rescued them from their ‘training camp’—“ Adolf knew that spitting when h e remembered the conditions of the place was inappropriate in front of fellow Aryans, brought up as he himself had been, “—none of them knew the alphabet! Or numbers! Or anything beyond basic commands.

  “Look at them now, just one year later!”

  Walter Bormann and his two companions murmured to each other. Adolf felt like a headmaster leading the trustees on an inspection of his school. Come to think of it, the comparison wasn’t far off the mark.

  “It is very impressive,” said Walter. “Everyone admires what you’ve done here. Many of us owe our lives to your polio vaccine, and I, myself am a graduate of your code school.”

  “As is anyone who wishes to communicate in the one language the Party doesn’t know,” said one of the two men with Walter.

  All four men took a moment to savor the irony that the dead language of Hebrew had become the underground’s first unbreakable code.

  “But the time is at hand for the revolution to come into the open,” Walter continued. “To challenge the Reich directly. To do that, we need more than misdiagnosed children and utopian communes.”

  “You’re missing the point,” said Adolf. “This entire place is living proof of the mistakes made by the Party—and their Cult of Science. Once we make what we have here known to the public—“

  “But we can’t make it known to the public until we control communications!” said the man who had spoken earlier.

  “And we can’t do that,” said the other one, “until we’ve consolidated all these squabbling organizations into a single army.”

  “That’s where you come in, Adolf,” said Walter. “Your reputation as a spiritual leader; this ‘rabbi’ thing; it makes you an ideal spokesman. This religion you’re spreading is catching on everywhere. And no one feels threatened by you. Join us, and we just might be able to pull everyone together: the fringe groups, the Aryans like ourselves who know the current system is doomed, and most importantly, the desperate masses who will be doing most of the actual fighting. We could finally declare all out war on the Reich—and have a shot at winning.”

  “Under your leadership?” Adolf tried to keep his voice neutral.

  Walter had the grace to blush. “Someone has to take responsibility for getting the job done. If you’re wondering if I might turn out to be the next dictator, it’s a reasonable concern, but I can assure you, it isn’t in my future.”

  So then what are your plans for after you win? Adolf thought about asking, but he already knew.

  Adolf always hated this part. He knew by now that he didn’t want to throw in with this group, and whomever else they had behind them. But having decided that, the problem was always how to say “no” without convincing them they had to kill you to protect their security.

  “Let me show you what else we’ve been doing here,” said a gravelly voice. Winifred, one of Adolf’s partners (although if asked, she would probably call herself one of his followers) stood in the doorway. The three visitors cringed when they saw her, but after only a moment’s shock, hurried to follow her. A point in their favor.

  Winifred had once been a beautiful woman. But a fire had so badly disfigured her that no perfection-worshipping Aryan could bear her presence. Her family had mercifully tried to kill her, rather than see her hidden away in an institution, but Winifred had found her way to the resistance instead.

  Now, while she took their visitors on a tour of the commune, Adolf would have time to consider their offer—and how to extricate himself from it.

  “Did we do okay?” Daniel asked anxiously.

  Adolf smiled, suddenly glad for the distraction. “You were great; all of you. Just like I tell you every day.”

  “Those men didn’t like us,” said one of the girls.

  “No, Rachel, they just don’t yet realize how important you are.”

  In reality, Adolf shared Rachel’s view, which further dissuaded him from an alliance with these people. He dismissed his students and went outside.

  Spring was just barely making itself felt this far north. Here, in a nearly forgotten corner of Denmark, small groups like Adolf’s struggled to reclaim land from sea, and workable farms from the devastation of the big earthquake.

  In the two years since leaving the polio colony, Adolf had finally achieved enough so that even he had to admit he was doing some good. The distribution of the vaccine had gone better than any of them had hoped. For months, it had been almost laughable as hungry, oppressed people from lower classes and lesser races showed a sudden resistance to a disease that was dropping Aryan supermen like flies.

  Dr. Speer had shown truly inspired timing, when, just as it seemed their leaders would begin vivisecting whole populations out of sheer frustration, the vaccine was “discovered” by a “brilliant Aryan scientist, formerly out of favor with the Party.”

  Adolf still worried about Speer, even more than he worried about Varina and Jacques, whom he hadn’t heard from in months. The doctor had the frightening job of living among the enemy every day, while Adolf lived among friends and followers. He had the luxury of speaking his mind, and following any crazy notion that came to it.

  He gazed fondly at the small farming commune he and his friends had begun last year. It wasn’t so small anymore. While Adolf was no better a farmer now than when he stayed with Stefan and Anna, many of those who followed him here had a true gift for coaxing a living from land that the Party had declared unusable. Between their hard work, and Adolf’s success at freeing the Reich’s oppressed and integrating them into this c
ommune, the place now fed and housed over one hundred people.

  Nothing that large or successful could escape the Party’s notice for much longer. Soon, they would have to disband. Or, at the very least, Adolf and certain other high profile activists would have to move on.

  He wished that fewer people knew who he had been before he joined the revolution. It was true that “Rabbi Adolf” enjoyed a reputation as a spiritual leader who shunned partisan politics, and whose advice was sought on everything from devising codes to performing weddings. But he suspected that it was Adolf Goebbels that people like Walter Bormann wanted to use.

  Adolf sighed. Why did he do this to himself?

  Because humility was his friend, and a revolutionary leader who started believing his own press wasn’t likely to live very long.

  And when powerful, self-confident leaders like Walter approached with dazzling visions of the future, it was easy to be swayed. And when desperate, broken people like Winifred or those kids he rescued looked at Adolf with adoration and put their lives in his hands, it was easy to swell with pride. None of which would help him right now.

  “So, will you be leaving us to pursue greater destinies?” Winifred broke into his thoughts.

  “Where are our guests?” asked Adolf.

  “With Baldric, learning all about our water purification system. They may not have been too impressed with the kids, but they’ll find enough to make the trip worthwhile."

  “Good,” said Adolf. “Because that’s all they’re getting from it.”

  Winifred’s scarred face showed surprise. “You won’t be going with them?”

  “I don’t trust them. Not that I think they’re spies, or anything other than what they say they are. It’s just…they’re not who I want leading the world.”

  “They may be the best shot we have.” Winifred wiped her hands on her apron and sat down on a bench beneath the grape arbor. Adolf sat beside her. “Look, Adolf, I don’t think much of Walter as a person. To him, Judaism is a convenient tool. For that matter, so are you. But he’s a damned sight better than what we have now.”