Danzig Passage (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  The best thing about Joseph was the way he purred and buzzed all over when Alfie stroked his soft fur, almost like laughing. It made Alfie feel happy inside that the cat liked him.

  At first Alfie worried when Joseph hopped up the steps and slipped out between the bars of the gate to disappear over the fence of the graveyard. Alfie hung on to the bars and looked out to the very spot where Joseph had jumped. He watched the place for hours and hoped that Joseph would come back. But Joseph sneaked back another way, and suddenly Alfie felt him rubbing against his legs and buzzing hello.

  After a while Alfie quit looking at the spot where Joseph jumped over the fence; he decided that Joseph was just playing a trick on him. Alfie gave Joseph an extra sardine every time he came back and let him lick the tin while he stroked his back. Alfie hoped Joseph would not go away forever. Such a terrible thought made Alfie’s heart beat fast with fear. He didn’t want to have to get used to loneliness again.

  “You are such a good friend, Joseph,” Alfie said to the cat. “Will you still come back when I run out of sardines? There are not very many cans left, but I will feed you all the same. But you must not forget me when there are no more sardines to eat.”

  Joseph purred as though food made no difference to him. He smiled a cat smile and cleaned his whiskers and lay down in a ball on Alfie’s big feet. Alfie sat very still for a long time because he did not want to disturb Joseph. He did not wiggle his toes or say anything at all, even though he was thinking how much he loved this new friend and how glad he was that Joseph shared his warm coat even though there were not many cans of sardines left.

  ***

  Lucy hoped to slip out of the room before Wolf awakened. She dressed in the dark, ran a brush hastily through her hair, and groped in the top drawer of the bureau for her Mass book. Today was the day of her patron saint, St. Lucy. It was also Lucy’s birthday—not that she expected anyone to remember. As a final gesture of an innocent past lost forever, Lucy longed to sit in the pew of St. Stephan’s Cathedral and hear the familiar words of the one Mass she remembered well.

  She quietly slid the drawer back into place and put a scarf over her head as she inched past the bed where Wolf lay sleeping like a guard dog dozing on the threshold.

  Her heart beat faster as her coat brushed the side of the bed. Help me; help me get out, and I will light a candle and—

  Wolf’s hand shot up and clamped hard around her wrist, pulling her down to her knees beside him. “Where are you going, little fox?” he asked with a too-sweet voice that betrayed his anger at being awakened.

  She cried out with pain at the strength of his grip. “Please, Wolf! You’re hurting me!”

  “Where are you going at this hour?” He did not reach up to switch on the lamp. He could not see the Mass book she held up in the blackness as proof.

  “I . . . I am going to confession! To early Mass!”

  “Or have you been somewhere and are just sneaking back into the room?” He twisted her wrist. “Eh? Have you been out with someone?”

  “Wolf!” The pain shot up her arm. She thought her wrist would snap. “No, Wolf! I am going to church! To Mass! Turn on the light, and I will show you!”

  He hesitated, then switched on the lamp without letting up on the pressure of her wrist. Blinking against the brightness, he peered at the little leather book she continued to hold up like a flag of surrender. A cross, an open Bible, and the communion cup were stamped in gold on the cover. He snatched the book from her free hand as she moaned softly, not trying to argue with him. “Parish Mass Book and Hymnal,” he read; then he flipped open a page marked by a red ribbon. He laughed as he read the writing at the top of the page. “St. Lucy. Virgin. Martyr! Innocence!” He roared with laughter, released her, and hurled the well-worn book against the wall.

  Lucy sat rubbing her wrist in the pool of light as he lay back on his pillow, laughing at the idea of his Lucy sneaking off to honor such a saint!

  She did not raise her eyes, but remained, shamed and humiliated, on the floor. “I . . . always go to Mass on this day,” she managed to say, although the words nearly choked her.

  “Well, you have nothing in common with this dead Catholic, let me tell you!” Lucy had never seen Wolf so amused. “St. Lucy’s Day! Virgin! Martyr! Innocence! Nothing you could claim!”

  She felt some desperate need to explain, to stop his ridicule. “It is . . . my birthday, Wolf. You see . . . I was not trying to . . . I mean, I know I am not . . . should not go, but every year . . . I have never missed a year.”

  He jabbed her under the chin with his thumb, lifting her head with the painful pressure until her eyes were forced to look at his mocking smile. “Your birthday is it, St. Lucy? My innocent virgin! My long-suffering martyr!”

  Tears stung her eyes. She held her breath, not wanting to dissolve into weak emotion in front of him. In one instinct of self-defense, she slapped his hand away and scrambled to her feet. “All right! I know what I am—I am the creation of your holy Reich! I know who I belong to! But I am going to Mass because it is my birthday. Even whores have birthdays!”

  His mouth still curved upward in a smile, but he shrugged and lay back, surprised at the sudden show of fortitude. He waved a hand as though brushing away a fly. “Go on, then. You women! All the same. You and your church! Every prostitute from the highest level in Berlin to the lowest level in Vienna has a crucifix above her bed.”

  She picked up the book and moved toward the door. She did not want to give him even an instant to change his mind and order her back to bed.

  “Be back before eight o’clock!” he shouted after her. “And bring me a pastry from Demel’s on the way back!”

  She slammed the door behind her as if she had not heard his words. Then she ran down the dark stairs and out into the cold, deserted streets of sleeping Vienna.

  ***

  Lucy was late. She stepped off the nearly empty streetcar on the opposite side of Stephansplatz and jogged quickly across the slick cobbles toward the Riesentor, the giant gate. She hoped the entrance was unlocked. Breathless from running, she threw herself against the massive doors beneath the first arch. They did not yield. She ran to the center and arch and pushed. Again, the door resisted her.

  It would be a small Mass, Lucy knew. St. Lucy was not a very important saint, as saints go. The priest will probably be in some little side chapel, she reasoned, running down the stone steps and making her way to the side and rear of the towering edifice.

  Clambering down a flight of steep steps, she pushed against the tarnished bronze handle of a wooden door. The hinges yielded, opening in welcome. Lucy lunged into the church, and found herself in a small, nearly deserted niche where a handful of old people knelt to receive Communion.

  The priest did not look at her as he held the host and blessed it, but certainly he must have heard the tardy worshiper clatter in!

  Lucy stood rooted, cradling the tiny book in her arms. Too late! I am too late even for this day! She knew the words by heart, but she dared not utter them. She had not been to confession; had not laid the hell of her sin before the black-frocked priest who now ministered to the ones who had been on time. Princes persecute me without cause, but my heart stands in awe of your Word. I rejoice at your promise as one who has found rich spoil . . . .

  Yes, Lucy knew the words. She had no need of the Mass book to read from today, but even as she listened, she knew that for her to speak such words was blasphemy! To speak the words of an innocent martyr, unabsolved, would heap more darkness on her soul. Lucy stood in silence. When the priest had passed down the row of kneeling communicants along the altar rail, he looked up at her questioningly.

  Lucy simply stared back in confusion and then she hurriedly shook her head and inclined her head toward the door as if to say she had stumbled in by accident. A convincing performance. The priest glanced away toward his early congregation and did not notice Lucy even when she stepped back into the shadows and turned to slip out the way she had e
ntered.

  20

  Christ Among the Suffering

  Names of the missing drifted across the frontiers of Germany first by the hundreds and then by the thousands. Businessmen and scholars, former politicians and clergymen, all had been swallowed up in a single night.

  Those in the free world could not hope to discover the fate of all of them; they could only hope to alter the fate of a few.

  The list for tonight’s TBS broadcast at the BBC in London contained only ten names—German priests and pastors who had been arrested on Kristal Nacht and had not been heard of since. Murphy carefully interviewed anyone who had known these men in the pre-Nazi days in Germany. Each page of the typed script bore a photograph of the missing clergyman and some biographical information, including family members and the possible reason for the arrest.

  The program would be beamed from London to Amsterdam and then into the heart of the Reich. If it reached the right ears, perhaps there would be answers.

  Two and one half minutes was allotted for each man and his family. An average of thirty seconds per name.

  Murphy reread the short descriptions and wondered how it was possible to cram an entire human life into two and a half minutes.

  ***

  The inner circles in Berlin knew that the original concept of the order came from Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring himself. Göring had no real sympathy for the weak and ineffective German Church, but his sister was quite open about her disapproval of Nazi tactics against the clergymen. Her vocal expressions of that disapproval were an irritation to Göring. At last he decided, “Anything to shut her up!”

  The case was brought personally to Adolf Hitler with the explanation: “The foreign press is not as concerned about our treatment of the Jewish question as it is about the crackdown on the clergy. Such a move would also quiet the murmurs from the Vatican.”

  The Führer listened and remembered that his own strong resolve was born out of his days in prison. Too much pressure against the German churchmen might, in fact, create a diamond out of a lump of coal.

  Based on that conclusion, a plan was formulated and the command was issued from the highest authorities in Berlin.

  ***

  Pine boughs scented the cold morning air. The clean, sweet aroma cleared Karl’s head of the foul odor of nights inside the prison barracks.

  Three dozen men worked on the line, stringing thick rolls of barbed wire on the inner perimeter of the compound. Within a week the wire would electrified, they were told. Even to touch the wire would mean instant death. But for now, bloody hands and nicked clothes were the only penalty they paid.

  The layers of wire seemed formidable enough without electricity, Karl thought. Even if a man somehow managed to get past this barrier, two more lay beyond it—not to mention the machine-gun towers above.

  He scanned the mile of fence that followed a gentle slope down and then a level stretch for another half-mile before the fence turned a corner. The camp was enormous. How could they expect to fill it? Why was it so big, and who were the potential prisoners waiting on the Nazi lists?

  Karl gazed up at the towering white clouds piling up over Polish territory. In the distance, he could hear the shrill whistle of the German express train as it slipped over the Polish border on its way to the free port of Danzig. Karl hesitated just a second too long for the young guard who watched him.

  “What are you looking at?” the guard demanded. He did not beat Karl, probably because of Karl’s vocation. A few Nazis still hesitated to beat a pastor.

  “I was listening to the train whistle,” Karl answered, as if he were carrying on a normal conversation on a street corner in Berlin.

  “A lonely sound,” the young dark-haired guard said as he lit a cigarette.

  “A lovely sound,” Karl contradicted as he returned to his task. “A free sound.”

  The whistle blew again, and a flock of birds rose up from the trees that bounded the track on the German side. In a spiral swirl they circled and then swept across to the Polish side of the frontier. The sky has no boundaries, Karl thought, as he watched and envied their flight.

  “Karl!” Richard’s voice came as an urgent reprimand, a request that he pay attention to their job. Maybe the guards thought twice about beating Karl, but Richard’s bruises were evidence that they did not hesitate at all to club him down for any imagined offense.

  Karl looked back, first at the sharp barbs, then at the bloody nicks in Richard’s hands. With every drop of blood spilled here at Nameless, Karl thought of crowns made of woven barbed wire and iron spikes driven through innocent hands. The image somehow made this suffering more bearable.

  “Karl!” Richard whispered again, raising his eyes for Karl to follow his gaze.

  Four soldiers tramped toward them through the mud. Only their eyes seemed visible beneath heavy helmets and warm trenchcoats with the collars turned up. Their eyes were fixed on Pastor Karl Ibsen.

  “You are Pastor Karl Ibsen?” asked the fellow with his rifle slung over his shoulder.

  Karl did not stop his work, but replied with a silent nod.

  “Then you will please come with us.” They stepped apart, leaving him room within their inner square.

  Richard’s eyes met Karl’s steady gaze. So this is it. They intend to shoot you or turn you loose, Richard seemed to say in that look. “God bless,” he whispered as Karl turned away. The soldiers did not hear him, or they would have knocked him down with the butt of a rifle.

  ***

  The camp commandant of Nameless was a small, waxy-faced man with worried, red-rimmed eyes. No one had ever seen him with his peaked cap off, and now Karl knew why.

  The thin, balding head was covered with scabs. Except for the Nazi uniform he wore, the fellow could have easily been mistaken for a prisoner with an advanced case of ringworm or eczema.

  He looked through the file marked with the name and number of Pastor Karl Ibsen. He scratched his ear. A dusting of dandruff flocked the shoulders of the proud black uniform.

  Karl stood silent before the desk of the little man in an office that was no more than a shack warmed by an iron stove. He did not mind the wait, nor was he intimidated by the shabby little man in the grand uniform. Karl enjoyed the warmth. It was the first time since his arrest that he had felt any warmth penetrate his clothes and body. It made him pleasantly sleepy.

  “So.” The commandant began at last. “You are Pastor Karl Ibsen of New Church, ja?”

  “Pastor Karl Ibsen of Nameless camp.” Karl gave a gracious bow.

  The officer was not amused. He wanted to get right to the point. His little nose twitched as the warmth of his stove began to awaken the stench of Karl’s body.

  “It seems there may have been a clerical error.”

  “Is there such a thing in the Reich?” Karl said, amused, guessing what was coming.

  With a wave of his hand the officer dismissed the comment as a jest. He managed a wan smile. “Yes. Well, sometimes even the Reich can make mistakes, given confusion and chaos of rounding up these vermin.”

  “Vermin?”

  “The Jews. The Jews you were arrested with.” He cleared his throat and studied the folder again. “It seems that one of the prisoners has reported that you had come to his flat in order to collect a debt he owed you. You were then arrested and brought here. If you are willing to swear to such a thing, you will be released . . . under certain conditions and restrictions, of course.”

  So, Richard had told his tale. He had lied for the sake of securing Karl’s release. “Was the prisoner Richard Kalner?”

  “Yes. The former professor. Richard Kalner.”

  “Where is my wife?” Karl jumped to the question uppermost in his mind. “Helen. My wife?”

  “She is also . . . in detention. As is the wife of Richard Kalner. We will see to it that they pay you what you are owed. Jews cannot take advantage of—”

  Karl raised a hand, interrupting the officer. “And what about my children
? Where are they? Also arrested?”

  “Naturally you are concerned.” The officer seemed almost solicitous as he scanned the report. “Son, James, taken to Hitler Youth school in Berlin. Daughter, Lori . . . at large.” His lower lip protruded as he said it again. “At large. Still . . . somewhere. Possibly with relatives?”

  Karl did not reply. Each beloved face came up before him now as he considered his choices. And what were those choices? “You mentioned certain conditions and restrictions.”

  “Yes. I have been instructed to inform you that this is a simple matter, really. You simply sign a paper saying that you have been well treated and that you will not slander the Reich. Your future sermons must be submitted to the local authorities for censorship. No different than every other church in the Reich nowadays.”

  “And may I preach from any part of the Scripture that I feel led to?”

  The officer laughed. Karl Ibsen surely was joking again. “Within the established guidelines of the State Church, you know.”

  “And what about those in my congregation who are of Jewish heritage?”

  “Well?” The officer became suddenly impatient. What sort of foolish question was this? “What do you think? If just going into a house to collect a debt got you arrested, then what do you think?”

  Karl did not have to think hard. “I want a public hearing,” he said coolly. “I am a citizen of Deutschland, and I request a public hearing.”

  “But . . . you are . . . I am telling you—” He held out the slip of paper that Karl was to sign. Good treatment . . . Do not hold the Reich responsible . . . “There can be no hearing, you see. If you sign this, you are free to go.” He smiled hopefully. “All you must do is denounce your associations with these Jews, and you are as free as any man in Germany.”

  “I was at the home of Richard and Leona Kalner because I owed them a debt.”

  The commandant laughed with relief. So that was what this was all about! “You do not know the laws? No Aryan owes any debt to a Jew. Your debts and my debts to the Jewish moneylenders are all erased, a gift from our Führer to the German people! So . . . it was all a mistake. You went there to pay this swine, and . . . well, here you are.”