by Bodie Thoene
The Führer swung a Nazi salute over the hilltop at Spichern Heights . . . and over the whole of the darkened earth.
PART III
And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.
The prince of darkness grim,
We tremble not for him—
His rage we can endure,
For lo! his doom is sure:
One little word shall fell him.
21
On the Edge of the Abyss
Horst von Bockman carried Yacov Lubetkin in a wicker laundry basket packed with diapers, one baby bottle, and two cans of milk. The aged sister at the Cathedral of St. John had warned Horst that the fourteen-month-old baby was getting another tooth and that if he should fuss, the best thing for it was straight rye whiskey smeared on the gums.
But baby Yacov did not fuss. Wide-awake now, he smiled up at Horst. In the Warsaw train station he squealed happily as an SS colonel leaned over the basket and tickled his chin. It was, Horst thought grimly, something like a lamb being licked by a tiger. Then the child took the colonel’s finger and pulled it to his mouth. This pleased the SS colonel. He roared with laughter.
“He is teething.” Horst looked away uncomfortably.
“Yes. I feel two teeth coming through on the bottom.” The SS colonel displayed his patience and affection with Aryan children. “Your child, Herr Major?”
“A strong child, I am pleased to say,” Horst said cheerfully. He controlled the revulsion he felt at the hand of a murderer so near the baby’s face. How many Jewish children had that hand slaughtered?
“I can see the resemblance. The eyes. Beautiful blue eyes, Herr Major. Where is his mother?”
“I am taking him home.”
“A son?”
“I do my duty for the Fatherland. This son is the only gift an honorable soldier can offer the future of the world in such a dark time.”
“Indeed! So says our Führer. If a soldier might lose his life for the Reich, he has left behind a legacy in a child. And this boy will be the best to come from Germany; it is plain to see. Very bright. I can spot a future general. This grip! A child who will sink his teeth into life!” He laughed at his joke and held up his wet finger. “What is he called?”
“Can you guess?” Horst gulped as the name escaped him. “Named for a great leader, Herr Colonel.”
“Adolf! Well done! A well-mannered infant. A handsome German son. I myself have four sons in the Hitler Youth. There is nothing like sons. You have done well for the Fatherland.”
“Thank you, Colonel. And now we are off to Berlin.”
The SS colonel offered advice for dealing with the ordeal of teething . . . whiskey on the gums. With a pleasant pat on Horst’s back, the tiger strolled away without suspecting the truth. Reeling, Horst hurried off to hide with Yacov in his first-class sleeping compartment.
On this night the train from Warsaw to Berlin was nearly empty. Except for a handful of drunk soldiers heading home for leave, everyone was already wherever they were going. Horst was grateful for this. There would be no grandmotherly types to croon over the baby.
But they were an hour out in the dark Polish countryside before his hands quit shaking and he could turn his thoughts from the SS colonel to the child who slept beside him in the basket. The priest’s plan for his escape seemed fantastic, and yet it might work.
“It is good that you are too young to know what all this is about, little one. You sleep on the edge of a flaming abyss, yet you are not troubled. What voice whispers peace to you?” Horst looked out at the star-flecked sky. “The priest says your angels ascend constantly before the throne of God and back to you again. . . . If there are angels who follow you, boy, they descend into the center of hell tonight.”
Horst tucked the blanket around the child’s chin. His gaze lingered on the pink cheeks and the long lashes. Here was contentment: Yacov’s tiny fist was clenched and his thumb placed in his mouth. Touching the velvet-soft hair, Horst considered the story the priest had told him about Etta and Aaron Lubetkin. Where were they and their other children now? What kind of world was this that made mothers and fathers thrust their infants into the arms of strangers, then turn away forever?
“I can make you no promises,” Horst whispered as though the parents of his ward could somehow hear him. “I cannot even promise that he will survive. But on my own honor as a soldier and my very life, I vow I will do everything I can to see your child safely home.” He closed his eyes. “I am so sorry . . . God? Hear me.”
He took the hand of Yacov, so small and soft and perfect, into his big fingers. The child stirred and breathed a ragged sigh.
What man could think of stopping such sweet breath? What kind of national government could call for the crucifixion of such innocence—to drive spikes through hands like these? What sort of people could allow it?
Had Horst known all along what was being done? The truth of Nazi racial doctrines had lingered like a dark shadow in the back of his thoughts like everyone else in Germany. But tonight he was certain of what Hitler meant when he threatened the annihilation of the Jews of Europe if there was war. The threat was not merely rhetorical!
The vision of the future loomed before Horst tonight in the image of a million nameless children. His eyes stung with tears of rage and shame. So many! How many are there? Too many to count! And it was only just beginning! This is what Katrina had tried to tell him. This is why Kurt had chosen to warn Belgium that their hope of neutrality was in vain. The shadow must not reach any farther beyond the borders of the Reich!
“I must do this,” Horst whispered. “But I cannot think of the others. Too many . . . too much . . .”
So it came down to the life of only one child in the mind of Horst von Bockman. For this one life he could risk everything! Exhaustion swept over him. With his fingers closed gently around the hand of the baby, he leaned his head back, and for the first time in months, he slept.
Had Katrina received his message?
Horst spotted her as the train chugged beneath the dome of the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof in Berlin. Wearing a loden green wool skirt, sweater, and beret, she leaned against an iron pillar draped with red swastika banners.
The baby was wide-awake. Fed, washed, and changed, he perched on Horst’s arm and watched the world slide by with interest. Horst stepped from the compartment onto the nearly deserted platform with the last huff and shudder of the train. He left the wicker basket behind, carrying only his valise and the baby.
Enormous posters of the Führer glared down at them from every wall. Katrina glanced, unseeing, toward Horst and then away. Her expression changed with the startling realization that the man walking toward her was indeed Horst, and he was not alone. She looked back again, held her astonishment in check, and pretended that the strange child in Horst’s arms was fully expected.
“You made it! Welcome, my darlings!” She hurried toward them.
Well done, Katrina! How beautifully she improvised in a world where the expression of surprise could be cause for official investigation.
Horst spotted the ubiquitous Gestapo agents lounging around the lobby of the uncrowded depot in search of any traveler who displayed even a glint of apprehension. Two plainclothes officers near the stairway. Another was beside the news kiosk, while a fourth pretended to read the paper.
“There is Mama!” Horst said loudly, pointing toward Katrina. It seemed a very ordinary reunion. The Gestapo barely glanced up as Katrina kissed Horst and took the child from his arms with delight.
There was other quarry to be sniffed out. A small, dark man with a haunted face walked too quickly toward the exit and glanced over his shoulder as if he was being pursued. Two of the Gestapo exchanged knowing looks and strolled after him.
The charade of Horst and Katrina played out. “Look at you! How I have missed you!” She kissed t
he baby and held him up over her head. Yacov frowned down at her and, for an instant, seemed as if he might break into tears. “No, my angel! What is it? Are you hungry? Horst, where is her bottle?”
“Teething,” Horst replied.
The light banter went on with Katrina calling Yacov she and her until at last they passed through the portals of the gleaming marble edifice of the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof and settled into the car with Horst behind the wheel and Katrina holding Yacov. Two policemen on the sidewalk, arms crossed, seemed not to see them.
Horst started the engine and ground the gears, his only sign of nervousness.
Katrina eyed him coolly. “So, hello, Horst. I am a mother, am I?”
“He is a boy.”
Katrina shot him a look. “Polish?”
“From Poland. Jewish.”
“A Jewish boy?” Katrina kissed Yacov on the cheek and brushed his hair with her fingers. She studied him for a moment, and he smiled curiously at her and batted her nose. “Very pretty. But Horst, a boy? He is circumcised?”
“Yes.” Horst pulled from the curb and drove down the deserted street.
“Well, well, little one,” she said. “We must not let a Nazi change your diapers.”
“With any luck he will not be in Germany long enough to need a change of diapers.”
“It is already too late for that. Do you have any clean things?”
“The valise.”
She fumbled with the latch and retrieved a diaper. Changing the baby on her lap as they drove toward the suburbs, Katrina said with a touch of wonder in her voice, “You might have told me about this.”
“There was no safe means.”
“The Gestapo could have seen how surprised I was and then . . .”
“You are a good enough actress, Katrina. I was counting on it.”
She was silent as they passed the new Chancellery building. The enormous Nazi flags were on display, indicating that Hitler was in residence. Katrina shuddered and instinctively held the baby nearer. “Where are we going, Horst?”
“Home.”
“That is not what I meant. I mean . . . us. Where are you and I headed? What has happened to you since you left me? Why have you done this? brought this baby to me? Is it because you thought it would change my mind about us? pacify me somehow?”
Horst thumped his hand angrily against the wheel and swore.
The baby began to cry.
“An arrogant thing to say, Katrina!”
“Look what you’ve done. You have frightened him!” She caressed Yacov and tried to quiet him, then fumbled in the bag for a bottle.
Horst pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator and sped across the bridge over the Spree River. “I have done this because . . . because I must! That is all! It has nothing to do with us . . . with where I stand with you. Or whether I remain a soldier or abandon my men in a fight because I do not agree with the politics of my country.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “What is the use? The child will be out of Germany soon enough. Safe. I need your help with him for a day or so. No more than that. It has nothing to do with whether or not you still care about me. It is his life and my soul! For once it has nothing to do with you. Can you understand that?”
Katrina stared straight ahead. Her jaw was set. “Good. That is all I wanted to know. Because . . . I wanted to tell you . . . you need not do anything to prove yourself to me . . . but this . . . well.” She turned toward him and put her hand on his shoulder and slid her fingers down his arm to touch his hand. “I have missed you, darling.”
This time Madame Hilaire came back on board the Garlic with a man in tow. He was dark-eyed, unshaven, and ominous in the way he wandered around the cabin, picking up everything as though he were shopping in a flea market. He looked at Papillon, who was perched on Jerome’s head, as if he might crush him.
“Who are you?” Jerome demanded of the man. After all, this was Jerome’s home, and what right did Madame Hilaire have to bring a stranger onto the Garlic without asking? And what right did this ragged character have to examine everything so closely?
“Who am I?” The man acted like he might strike Jerome for asking. Then he shouted to Madame Hilaire, “He wants to know who I am.”
She snorted at the impudence of such a question. When Jerome tried to get an answer from her, she did not look at him. She reeked of sour wine. Her hair was even more unruly than usual. She stood with her hands on her hips and stared with proprietary satisfaction past the children at the bed, the table, the dish cupboards, and the pans stacked in the dry sink.
The man lifted the hatch and peered into the engine compartment.
“What are they doing, Jerome?” Marie asked. She was troubled, even frightened, by the intrusion.
Jerome took his sister up the ladder and onto the deck. He instructed her to sit on the rope coil and hold Papillon. The sun was bright and beautiful. The stone faces on Pont Neuf gaped at the two children. Jerome took a seat beside the open cargo hatch and leaned down to listen to the conversation. With the shouting of Madame Hilaire it was not hard to understand the intent.
“Well, Captain, what do you think of it?” she screamed.
He shouted back, enunciating each word. “She is a reeking Garlic all right, Madame!”
“But what will you pay for her?”
Marie jumped to her feet. “Pay? Does she mean buy? Buy the Garlic?”
“Stay here!” Jerome ordered. Then he bounded down the hatch. “Monsieur.” He was panting as he stood at the elbow of the man, who ignored him. “I do not care what Madame Hilaire tells you. Our ship is not for sale. It is not hers to sell. She is our guardian only.”
The man turned and laughed, throwing his head back and opening his mouth wide to reveal blackened teeth. “She is your guardian, boy?”
Jerome put his hands behind his back so the man would not see how he was shaking. Something terrible was happening, and Jerome did not know how to stop it.
“She is meant only to watch over my sister and me, Monsieur. The Garlic is ours. It belongs to our father, who is a poilu at the front.”
Again the laugh.
Madame Hilaire looked at Jerome as she would regard a fly to be swatted or brushed away. She shrugged.
Jerome knew that his words were of no consequence. The scheming hag was up to something.
“Look, boy.” The man shoved him back. “Let me tell you something. Madame Hilaire has this paper, see? It is from your papa. He gives her the power to tend to his affairs while he is gone. Do you understand, boy?”
“But Papa did not mean—”
“She has the paper. He has signed it. Madame Hilaire is authorized to sell this tub. Of course the money will be used to care for you and your sister.”
The hag nodded broadly and grinned in agreement with whatever she thought she heard.
Jerome rushed at her ferociously. He grabbed her arms and pushed her back against the wall. “Thief! You cannot do this to us. I will tell my Uncle Jambonneau. I will write Papa, and he will have you thrown into jail!”
“Get the rubbish off me!” she wailed.
The man picked up Jerome by the back of his shirt and held him aloft. Jerome swung his fists, but the man was out of reach.
“Look, boy, your father was in debt. This is the only way his debts can be paid. What can he do? Settle his accounts on fifty centimes a day?”
Madame Hilaire brushed herself off in indignation. She tugged up her sleeves and waddled to where Jerome dangled. She spit on the floor of the cabin and then slapped Jerome hard across the cheek. Much worse than the slap was the way she lowered her voice and spoke to him in a sinister whisper for the first time.
“Little beggar! There are plenty of charity wards for scum like you and your sister. You think I can support myself and you on what Jardin is paying me? Now get out of here! I am selling the Garlic, and there is nothing you can do about it! When the war begins, your father will die anyway. They always put the stupid sheep in fron
t of the cannons. A charity ward is all you have to hope for.”
Jerome heard the sobs of Marie from on deck. The eyes of the stranger turned up. He guffawed. “A pitiful thing, this is, Madame Hilaire. Tragic. That a man does not even care for his own children properly. Ah, well. This way they will begin life with a clean slate . . . with nothing at all to encumber them.”
22
Surprising Solutions
Jerome Jardin was worried. It was as if something had turned on a water tap in the eyes of Marie, and Jerome could not turn it off again. She was not blubbering or making even a sound, but every time Jerome looked at her face, there was an unending stream of new tears trickling down her cheeks. Very quiet and troubling. The noiseless suffering of his sister made him feel even more miserable inside. He felt bad enough already.
Madame Hilaire had tied up some clothes in a bundle and thrown them from the Garlic onto the quai. She told Jerome and Marie that if they came back she would call the gendarmes and have them sent to a charity orphanage. Jerome would be conveyed to a home for boys. Marie would be dispatched to a home for girls, and they would never see one another again.
“Do not feel bad, Marie,” Jerome had said. “We will go to the hospital. We will send word to Uncle Jambonneau. He will know what we should do.”
Marie had nodded and sniffed. Yet her nose was still dripping even now. Marie was like a sponge, Jerome thought, oversaturated with liquid. It was as though Madame Hilaire had stepped on poor Marie, and all the juice was squishing out of her at once. Could there be so much dampness in one so little? It was a pathetic sight.
Even Papillon was worried. Sweet little rat Papillon—he had the kind heart of a dog, even if he was a rat. Sitting on Marie’s shoulder, he patted her salty tears. Putting his paw to his mouth he tasted her grief and twitched his whiskers in concern. When Marie finished this weeping, would she be all shriveled and dry like a raisin?
