City of God

by E. L. Doctorow

  Pem realized at this point that Joshua had never talked to the old woman, that he hadn’t had the chance. He now said to her that the American who’d been beaten was a rabbi and had come to Vilna to seek journals from the ghetto that had been held for safekeeping by a priest in Vilna. Yes, the woman said immediately, that would have been Father Petrauskas, my own priest from the Church of St. Theresa on Kaunas Street, and she crossed herself. We all knew what he had done, she said. And that wasn’t the only thing. Not at all. Sometimes he hid people. Oh yes, he was a Jew lover. He thought the business with the Jews was not right, he said it was not right what was being done to them. Nobody told on him, he was a good man and meant well, he was a better priest than most. The father lived through the war, but the war destroyed his church and he was never the same. I used to cook him a meal now and then when he lived in the home they have for them and Josip would bring it to him.

  Who is Josip, Pem asked.

  He is my son, he is my only surviving child, my youngest, the others were all killed in the war. He was too young. He was an altar boy for the father.

  Where is Josip now, Pem asked.

  Where would you think at this hour, at his business, he is a tile setter, if you want to know, the best in Vilna.

  And so Pem tracked down this Josip, a man in his fifties, who told him that the Russians had come to loot Father Petrauskas’s church and discovered a battered wooden chest that the father kept in the closet of his own room in the rectory, where he slept. The chest was padlocked, Josip said, it was sealed with tape and wrapped around with thick rope. The soldiers, with their arms full of candlesticks and silver, called for an officer. When the officer arrived he was unlike the men, he seemed very civilized. He smoked a cigarette with a holder and his uniform was quite clean. Josip was afraid the father would be taken away, but the officer questioned the father politely and the father told the truth—that what was in the chest were writings of Jews. The officer, with a black crayon, wrote a description of the contents in Russian, then signed his name and serial number right there on the top of the chest and then ordered the soldiers to remove it without disturbing the seal and that was the end of the matter.

  “My training as the Divinity Detective stood me in good stead,” Pem told me. “Clearly that had been an intelligence officer questioning the father. The Russians swept up anything that might conceivably be of importance, even though ninety-nine times out of a hundred they would never look at it again. Moscow is a really interesting place right now. The vaults of the KGB are like a flea market. It took some time, but they’ll sell you anything if the price is right.”

  —The chest is impounded at JFK until, at Pem’s request, he can get in touch with the Justice Department and have one of their attorneys present when it is cracked open, as customs has insisted it must be. If the archive includes documentary proof of the identity of the ghetto commander, S.S. Major Schmitz, it will have to resist a challenge in court, and so the circumstances of the unsealing of the material have to be irreproachable.

  And now, the arrangements having taken the better part of two weeks, the day has come. Pem and Sarah ride out to JFK in a taxi. It is a late weekday morning, it is raining. They do not speak. Sarah uses her cell phone to remind her helper, Angelina, that the boys have half a day of school because of a teachers’ conference and will have to be picked up at lunchtime. Sarah’s raincoat has fallen open, she is wearing a suit, and Pem notices how well shaped her pantleg is above the knee. The observation directs him to an intent reading through the rain streaks of the color-coded directions along the airport highway.

  Pem’s new triumphalist self-regard is on this morning absent. Rising behind his eyes is the old familiar bleakness. It is not that Sarah isn’t tremendously impressed by what he’s done. On the contrary, she seems to have awakened to him in some way, she seems to have moved with him into an acceptance of their growing intimacy. But he wonders about his own motives—if he is incapable of an act that does not contain its own corruption. Could this have been at heart no more than a seductive stunt? He had flown into Moscow, he had made calls, spoken as a priest to the fathers, a diplomat to the attachés, a con man to the hustlers, he had flashed his roll, laid on a lot of attitude, and fearlessly penetrated the KGB. Of course they were all like beggars with their hands out, but he didn’t know that, did he?

  Certainly, as an act of contrition, it hardly qualified. It was an adventurer’s act of contrition.

  In his gloom, the curves and forks and ramps of the airport road system, and the various terminals on the horizon, seem to constitute another kind of city, a city of unearthly scale whose denizens are huge flying machines, one of which suddenly emerges from the overcast and roars over them, its landing gear like talons.

  Minutes later in a small office in the International Arrivals Building, Sarah, Pem, a young woman from the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York, and various customs people watch as an inspector takes up a hammer and chisel and goes to work. The chest sits on a steel table. It is larger than Sarah understood from Pem’s description, she had imagined it as the size of a footlocker, but it is larger, deeper. It looks homemade, it is hammered together with big heavy nails and metallic corner pieces. It was painted white, but where the paint has flaked off there is raw lumber.

  She sits in one of the bridge chairs lining the wall. The customs man has found the rusted locks impervious and asks now if he can pry off the hasps, which, he warns, will splinter the wood. Without quite realizing the proprietorship she has been granted, Sarah nods her approval. Yet the sound of the splitting wood makes her wince—as if her father’s history is seeping into the room.

  The hasps are pried off and the thick rope is cut. The attorney takes a small camera out of her bag and snaps three, four pictures of the Russian writing across the top of the chest. Then the inspectors move forward. They carefully lift out packages of various sizes wrapped in oilskin. There is in addition an oilskin lining against the inner sides of the chest, the fierce preservation of these materials is unmistakable and, to Sarah, itself an urgent message that brings a sob to her throat. The inspectors unwrap the packages to find sheaves of paper bound in twine, booklets, manuals, folders, rolled-up blueprints, diagrams, stapled documents, envelopes of various sizes, each labeled in a small, neat Yiddish script. They open every packet, every envelope. Then, having run their hands along the inner walls of the chest, they agree among themselves that there is nothing here of interest to them. They replace everything, more or less as they found it, and excuse themselves.

  Pem and the attorney dive in. In notebooks, students’ bluebooks, and unbound pages, a diary in one increasingly familiar hand covering a period of three years, 1941 to the date in 1944 when the ghetto is dismantled and the survivors are marched to the railroad station. And reams of documentation, rules and regulations issued by the Germans, innumerable orders, with the signature of Commandant Schmitz, confiscating all domestic animals, then all wagons and, subsequently, all books, typewriters, cameras, candelabra, jewelry. It is forbidden for Jews to be seen on the street after seven P.M., it is forbidden for Jews to possess farm tools, for Jews to assemble more than three together, and so on, everything taken away, little by little, until there is only life left to take away. And then testimonies of witnesses about the ways in which that was done. Sarah reads some of these and provides stunned summary translations. In a separately wrapped packet is a complete dossier on Commandant Schmitz—a c.v. with date and place of birth, names of his parents (mother’s maiden name Preissen, apparently the source of the name Helmut Preissen claims as an American citizen), schooling, date of joining the Nazi party, date of entry to the S.S., commission as an officer, and finally a quite clear black-and-white photo of the man in full Nazi regalia, standing plump and righteous before a scaffold with the dangling body of a hanged Jew miscreant behind him. But there is material, too, on other S.S. men and Lithuanian policemen and known Gestapo spies and the attorney wants all of it and asks permi
ssion to have the entire archive removed for photocopying before Sarah takes possession of it. The attorney is trying very hard to be businesslike but has trouble finding her voice. She will also want to FedEx certain of the originals to the war-crimes office of the Department of Justice. She is sure the deportation case against this Preissen/Schmitz will be reopened, but there are several hundred open cases on file of suspected Nazi criminals living in the United States and perhaps some of these other materials on individuals will be relevant as well.

  The attorney goes out to make her arrangements and now Pem and Sarah are alone in this bare fluorescent-lit room. . . the big white chest sits open on the table with all its materials spilled about, and unexpectedly it appears to Pem to have the texture of a museum installation, the diary entries in their tiny Yiddish script on paper as pliant as the folds of white mourning shrouds, the open wood chest standing broken open as the repository of a sacred scripture. The entire composition is in shades of white, everything white on white, including the gray-white walls of the room. There is no Christ in the picture, but in Pem’s breast is the same instinct to pray once evoked in him by the painted Crucifixions of Cimabue and Grunewald. The uncanny feeling comes over him, like the dizzying blood drift of an illness, that this bare unadorned room of industrial windows and terrible harsh light is what a new church must aspire to, though where the thought of a new church has come from he doesn’t know.

  I claim he realizes in the next instant that if he opens his mouth and confides in Sarah, she will turn and flash upon him the implacable judgment from her anguished blue eyes that he is beyond redemption. Suspecting this may very well be the case, he takes the chair next to her and is quiet.

  Sarah has in her hands typed lists of those who have died in the ghetto and also those who were taken from the ghetto and never again seen. Each name has a date and place of birth next to it. Not infrequently, the names of entire families are listed. There is no time or distance in Sarah’s apprehension of these pages, they are not historical but, in their simple exact notation, a curve of the universe’s light flashing through her, lasing her consciousness into these leaves of paper, letter by letter, as if the newly dead are being written down as she reads, with the thunderings of jets and the drone of passing traffic in her ears.

  And now Pem hands her an envelope of forbidden little black-and-white photos. . . a line of men and women marching to work behind barbed wire. . . a husband and wife and their child on a bench having their picture taken, the cloth stars sewn to their coats. . . simple pictures, calm, expressionless faces. . . a woman on her knees in the vegetable garden. . . the members of the council posing in business suits with stars. . . a body in a business suit hanging from a gallows, the head, awry, staring heavenward. . . winter, snow on the ground. . . and here, seven little boys in front of a wood cabin, they are standing at their idea of attention on the steps of this wood cabin. . . they wear military-school caps and stars on their breasts that might possibly be imagined as insignia of their office as runners for the council. . . unsmiling little boys, one with shoulders hunched up in the instinctive posture of self-protection. . . or perhaps he is cold. . . they are all underdressed, with short pants and sweaters and jackets they have outgrown. . . but each of them at attention, feet together, arms pressed against his sides. . . and they are looking into the camera in the full knowledge of death. Sarah finds her father in the first row.

  —After my talk with Pem’s bishop, I had looked into the matter of the notorious James Pike, bishop of California. It was true, Pike was pure sixties. Said all the evidence as well as theological common sense suggested Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Said he could not accept the doctrine of the Trinity, that it verged on tritheism. Said he had trouble with the Second Coming, too. Said none of this made him a bad priest or weakened his faith. Episcopalians are interesting.

  But when I brought the subject up with Pem he grew irritable. Yeah, I know, that’s my bishop’s read on me—Pemby, son of Pike. You don’t buy that, do you? I mean, true, the man was gutsy, liberal as hell, a breath of fresh air. But he was also a bit of a lightweight. When his son died of an overdose, Pike went to a medium who summoned up the son for a chat. Did you know that?

  No.

  That was a tragic thing, his losing his son—but being conned by a spiritualist? Arthur Ford, that was the guy’s name, he was a studious medium, he did his homework, he kept files on people, including a thick file on the Pike family. Spiritualism is the dementia of the religious mind. And you know how Pike died, don’t you?

  In Israel.

  In Israel. Went off to the desert looking for the historical Jesus. With a bottle of Coca-Cola in his hand.

  You seem a bit on edge.

  I am not on edge. You’re the one who’s pissed off.

  I?

  Because we didn’t call you to come to the airport with us.

  No, I’m over that. I can work from things I hear about secondhand. No big deal.

  This is a delicate time for Sarah. And for me too.

  You don’t have to apologize.

  I’m not. But when you come back to me with my bishop’s bullshitting—

  I thought I might see what he looked like, that’s all. I don’t usually run into bishops in my line of work.

  Did you tell him where I was? What I was doing? What did you tell him?

  Nothing!

  Come on—

  Well, nothing important. . . Just that you’d gone to the desert to look for the historical Jesus with a bottle of Coca-Cola in your hand.

  That’s funny.. . . So I’m being paranoid?

  Only a little.

  He’d just gotten married, too, Pike. A new young wife. His third.

  Miss? Can we have another?

  They had a car, they’d rented a car. A way out, the car broke down, they started walking. Apparently this was not much of a road, no more than a dirt track, but they thought they’d been driving to Bethlehem. So what would you do, you start walking?

  Keep going in the same direction.

  That’s right. What any sane person out in the goddamn desert—keep to the road. Just walk on down the road to Bethlehem. But the story is they’re wandering around for hours in the rocks, the canyons, totally lost. How did that happen? The road petered out? I don’t know. They’d come away without a map. What was the matter with these people?

  So eventually he can’t go on, man is in his fifties, not terribly fit. They didn’t know from fitness back then. So they agree she will go on, try to get help. And, what I suppose, he finds some ledge with a bit of shade, they say good-bye, and she strikes out alone. He sits there in the desert after she’s gone, it is very hot, he has placed himself in the home of his soul, this mountainous red desert, he can see the caves of the Scrolls, he can smell the peculiar wryness of the Dead Sea, that saltine air. . . the light shimmers in his eyes in waves, the red rock gives intimation of the stony ground of his religion. Off his left ear some sort of hirsute spider slowly climbs the cracks of the abutment he’s leaning against, the salt is so thick in the distant sea as to be insoluble, the sea is a drying agent, he sits in its influence, its aura, and feels it deliquesce the sweat on his brow, on his back, he watches it fade the color of the cola in his bottle, he lifts the bottle to his lips, but before he can drink the level of colorless liquid sinks and leaves to his transfixed gaze a crust of dry sugar at the green bottom, a waxy residue of gum. And then the green bottle turns white. . .

  To my astonishment, Pem’s eyes were tearing.

  Listen, Father, I’m concerned for you.

  This is my problem, Everett, not yours. Just remember that. Trouble with you writers, you don’t keep your distance.

  He takes out his handkerchief, wipes his eyes. Clears his throat.

  I loved Pike because he knew the accumulated doctrine was simply not credible. Fantasy. Historically accumulated bullshit. But he adored Jesus the man. He wanted to find the real Jesus. He quit the church, you know, he n
ever lacked for guts, he unfrocked himself and took the trip to the Holy Land.

  Is that what you’re going to do? I mean now that you’re an experienced traveler? Quit, and then really go to the Holy Land, like Pike, wander out there and die of heat prostration?

  Maybe. It cheers me to talk with you, Everett. You ready for another round?

  I just ordered one.

  This going back to where it started. To where it went wrong. That point. Before the history. That’s what he was doing. Oh migod, what a longing there is. So dangerous. It can kill you.

  —Follow the Bouncing Ball

  Young scientist Louis Slotin was testing the bouncing ball by halves, using simple screwdrivers to nudge its two cored hemispheres toward each other on a steel rod. At a certain point he must not go beyond, the spherical closure of the hemispheres would give indication of being about to happen. This was the moment of synapse, the precise critical measurement he was looking for. He was a daring fellow, as well as a brilliant biophysicist, he’d flown for the RAF in the Second World War.

  He was hunched over the apparatus, peering at the minute incremental lines of measurement on the steel rod, when one of the screwdrivers seemed to jump with a will of its own. For that one bobbled instant it sprang up and knocked the hemispheres together.

  In his hospital bed, Louis Slotin would remember through his searing agony the intense blue light that had flooded his eyes. He thought in that moment a clamping of the hemispheres should make a hard sound. Instead, there was a terrible hiss of transfiguration. With his bare hands, he grabbed the bouncing ball and rent it in half. And all at once the quiet room filled with normal daylight.

  Out in the desert, near the village of Oscuro, or Darkness, the scaffold was built to hold the Bouncing Ball. Louis Slotin’s colleagues, wearing black armbands, drove out to the desert near the village of Oscuro where the two halves of the Bouncing Ball, primed now in their casing, were attached to a pulley and slowly hoisted to position on the scaffold.