Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  "...for the sake of the blessed death and glorious resurrection of Your Son, Jesus Christ, through Whom we mortal men are made heirs of eternal life..."

  Weyrauch was nervous, frightened, terrified, even as Louisa was terrified, even as Petra Loewenstein was terrified. These three admitted their fears while Joachim Festhaller, reluctant to display his own to Colonel Schlacht, attempted to disguise his desire to leave Budapestby concocting all manner of excuses that Schlacht refused to accept. Only Schlacht seemed genuinely calm and unfrightened by the realization that another of Kaldy’s kind was prowling the environs of the city, another werewolf, uncaptured, uncontrolled, unidentified, and doubtless seeking to find the man whom they were keeping imprisoned in the Ragoczy dungeon.

  "...be with us, bless us and keep us, and send Your angels to guard us, that the evil one may have no power over us. I ask this in the precious name of your only begotten Son, to Whom be all glory and honor now and in the world to come. Amen."

  "Hypocrite!"

  Weyrauch turned his head and saw his wife Louisa standing beside the chapel door, her arms folded across her chest, her face a mirror of her anger and disgust and fear. "Hypocrite!" she repeated.

  Weyrauch rose up from his knees. "Not now, Louisa, for God’s sake...!"

  She laughed incredulously. "For God’s sake?! For God’s sake?!"

  "Stop it," he commanded.

  "I’ll stop when you stop, Gottfried," she replied. "I’ll stop reminding you of what a weak, pathetic excuse for a man you are, when you stop ignoring what you know is your duty as a Christian and as a German."

  "‘The powers that be are ordained of God,’" he shot back."Does that sentence sound at all familiar, Louisa? Do you remember who Saint Paul was, Louisa?"

  "‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,’" she responded. "Do you remember who Jesus Christ is, Gottfried? You talk about him often enough!"

  "I cannot place myself in a position of rebellion against the authority of the State," he shouted. "Scripture is very clear on this point. So is Augustine, and so is Luther. It is given to the Church to govern the realm of the spirit and it is given to the State to govern the realm of the flesh. The Christian must be obedient..."

  "The Christian must not kill, Gottfried! The true Christian must rather die than countenance sin!"

  "Don’t be absurd, Louisa! I haven’t killed anyone, and I would never kill anyone." He began to walk toward the door of the chapel.

  "What do you think you’re doing by helping Helmuth? Why do you think he wants to discover the secret to Kaldy’s condition? Do you think that he plans to open a circus sideshow?"

  Weyrauch spun around and grabbed her by the shoulders, an action so forceful and uncharacteristic that she was startled into momentary silence as he shouted, "And where have been your great acts of morality, Louisa? What have you done, other than condemn me for trying to survive? Tell me, Frau translator, Frau note-taker, Frau onlooker!" He released her, and as he began again to walk toward the door, he added sarcastically, "For so dedicated a rebel you seem none the worse for wear."

  "You wish to survive, Gottfried?" she asked as she walked after him. "Is that your cardinal goal, survival? Very well." She moved in front of him and blocked his path. "Then let’s survive, let’s both survive. Let’s get away from here. If you won’t go to Switzerland, let’s at least get away from Budapest." She grabbed his hands and squeezed them earnestly. "There’s a werewolf out there, Gottfried, a murdering monster!"

  "And now the truth," he smirked. "You are simply frightened, my dear, afraid of dying, afraid of being killed, and so you want to do whatever is necessary to avoid such a fate. And that is precisely what I have been doing for the past eleven years."

  "Oh, Gottfried, you idiot!" she screamed. "If you had an ounce of common sense, you’d be as frightened as I am!"

  "Oh, but I am as frightened as you are," he said, pushing her roughly out of the way and continuing on through the doorway and out into the hall. "I am terrified, Louisa, absolutely terrified, but I am as frightened of the Nazis as I am of the werewolf, I am as frightened of your cousin as I am of this Claudia who seems to be making her presence known. But there are differences. There are only two of these creatures, and there are millions of armed men under the Führer’s command. And werewolves do not establish concentration camps."

  He drew nigh to Schlacht’s office, knowing that he was a few minutes early for the scheduled meeting, but wishing to end this unpleasant conversation as quickly as possible. He could have simply pushed open the door and entered the office, but he could not resist having the last word. "One more thing you must keep in mind, Louisa," he said as he placed his hand on the doorknob. "This war will end eventually. Perhaps we will win..."

  "We!" she exclaimed. "We!"

  "...and perhaps we shall lose. But win or lose, I shall survive. Whether Germany ends up ruling the world or lying in ruins, I shall be alive. I doubt that the same thing can be said for your precious Bonhöffer, or for you either, unless you begin to think like an adult and not an emotional schoolgirl." He pushed open the door and entered the anteroom, leaving the door open for his wife. Fuming silently and hating him with every ounce of her being, she followed him past Vogel’s desk and went into Schlacht’s office.

  If Weyrauch had hoped that entry into the presence of his wife’s cousin would signal an end to argument, he was sadly mistaken, for as he and Louisa entered the office the first thing they heard was Petra Loewenstein screaming, "I don’t care about my role in the project, and I don’t care about the expansion of knowledge! I want to get away from here! "

  "Fräulein Loewenstein," Schlacht shouted back, "you have been assigned to this project by Dr. Mengele with the approval of Reichsführer Himmler! Here you are and, until I say otherwise, here you will stay!"

  Petra heard the door open and turned to see Weyrauch and Louisa walk into the room. She went to Weyrauch and grabbed his arm desperately as if he were somehow to be her ally and salvation. "Please, Dr. Weyrauch, please speak to him, please make him let me go back to Auschwitz! Any chemist can do what I’ve been doing, any chemist at all, he doesn’t need me here!"

  "Petra," Weyrauch said gently, "I really don’t have anything to say about it, really, I don’t. Now we are all perfectly safe here, you know that..."

  "She doesn’t know anything of the sort," Louisa snapped, "and neither do I." She looked at her cousin. "Helmuth, I am a civilian, and so is Fräulein Loewenstein. Neither of us is under any obligation to remain here, shivering in our beds while we wait for a werewolf to break into our rooms and murder us."

  Schlacht rose up slowly from behind his desk and glowered at her. "Now listen to me, Louisa, and pay careful attention to what I am saying to you. Germany is at war, and when a nation is at war there is no such thing as a civilian. You and Fräulein Loewenstein and Gottfried and everyone else under my command will do exactly as they are told, without argument, without dissent and without giving me any more of the incessant headaches which I have been having ever since I have been seeing you again!" She started to say something but he cut her off. "Louisa, one more word, and so help me God it will be you who finds herself on the train to Auschwitz!"

  A few moments of tense silence ensued. What had been apparent to Weyrauch from the outset, and what had been axiomatic with Petra, was becoming frighteningly clear to Louisa: Helmuth Schlacht, despite the ties of blood that connected her with him, was perfectly capable of killing anyone who opposed him, herself included. That a Colonel of the Nazi S.S. would not be reluctant to spill innocent blood was an idea which would have surprised no one other than Louisa, for part of her still thought of Schlacht as the blond-haired little boy with whom she had played in childhood, and the clear-eyed youth with whom she had so often argued during their teenage years. In that moment of silence following Schlacht’s threat, she finally accepted in her heart what she had always known in her mind, that her cousin, her Aun
t Gertrude’s son, was a murderer, that he had murdered political prisoners in Dachau, that he had murdered Jews in Slovenia, that he was murdering Gypsies right now in Hungary and Romania, that he was quite prepared to murder her if need be.

  Louisa sat slowly down into one of the chairs and did not speak further. She tried to ignore the amused, smug, self-satisfied grin on her husband’s face.

  "Colonel," Petra began somewhat hesitantly, "might I at least receive permission to find my own lodgings in the city? I... I really don’t want to be in the Palace at night."

  "Why not?" Schlacht asked, sitting back down, inwardly pleased at his cousin’s silence. "We have an ample supply of wolfsbane here. Kaldy is confined and controlled, and if the other creature tries to free him we will be able to capture her as easily as we captured him."

  "Yes, but..." Petra paused, choosing her words carefully, not wishing to anger this mercurial, potentially deadly man. "If the other werewolf is in the area, it is reasonable to assume that she is here, as you say, to attempt to free Kaldy, which means that she will most likely enter the Palace at some point. Colonel, I am not a soldier. I am a chemist. I would be of no use to you dead, and even alive I cannot be of help in capturing the other creature." She waited for Schlacht to respond, and the pensive, reflective look on his face encouraged her to continue. "I am serving the Führer and the Fatherland, and I have no wish to stop doing so. I am a loyal German. I am dedicated to our common cause. But my presence in the Palace at night serves no purpose, and subjects me to unnecessary and purposeless danger."

  "Why you, as opposed to anyone else?" Schlacht asked.

  "Because I am the researcher here," she said earnestly. "I am the one milking Kaldy of his saliva, I am the one trying to find out what causes him to change and what can be done to hurt or kill him. That makes me the enemy, more so anyone else, even you."

  Schlacht laughed. "I doubt that Kaldy would agree with your assessment, but your point is well taken anyway. Very well, Fräulein Loewenstein, I shall have someone from my staff find you lodgings in the city."

  "I... ah... I already have, Colonel," she said meekly, and then added, "Knowing as I did that you would make a logical and appropriate decision..."

  Schlacht found her impertinence somehow oddly amusing, and he struggled to repress a laugh. She seemed to sense this, and she blushed and smiled at him shyly. Schlacht began to respond to her statement, but then looked to the door as Festhaller opened it and entered the room. "Herr Professor," Schlacht greeted him, "have the preparations been made?"

  "Yes, everything is ready," Festhaller said, seating himself in a chair beside Petra.

  Weyrauch turned from Festhaller to Schlacht. "What is ready, if I may ask?"

  "An experiment, Gottfried," Schlacht replied. "Fräulein, perhaps you can bring the good Doctor up to date."

  "Certainly, Colonel," she said and then turned in her seat to face Weyrauch. "You recall that we were able to isolate an enzyme in Kaldy’s saliva which we were unable to identify?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Well, while you were subjecting Kaldy to hypnosis this morning, I was continuing my attempts to analyze the substance. I have made some headway." She reached into the file folder which she was carrying and took out a sheet of paper. As she handed it to Weyrauch she said, "As far as I can tell, this is the chemical formula of the enzyme. Additionally, I have determined what I believe to be the two constituent chemicals of which the enzyme is composed."

  Weyrauch squinted at the writing on the page. The first formula which Petra had written down in her precise handwriting was C37-H38-N2-04. Below this she had written C16-H16-N2-02, and below that C21-H22-N2-02. "The first two formulae are not known to me, but the third one looks familiar. I can’t quite place it..."

  "The chemical structure of that constituent of the enzyme seems to be identical to that of the poison strychnine," Petra said, pointing to the third formula.

  "Ah, yes, yes, that’s it," Weyrauch nodded. "But I hardly think that strychnine..."

  "But look, here," she said, pointing to the second formula. "This combination of elements is not present in strychnine. It is, however, very similar to a substance which can be derived from the North American mushroom, psilocybe mexicana. Like strychnine, it is a toxin, though in small amounts it is a non-lethal hallucinogenic."

  "And can the combination, the enzyme itself, be synthesized?" Weyrauch asked.

  "I’ve tried to do just that," Petra replied, "but I’m uncertain of the chemical ratios of the constituents."

  Schlacht raised his eyebrows. "You didn’t mention that in your report, Fräulein."

  She shrugged. "I preferred to explain it to you in person, knowing how impatient you become when reading the reports we prepare for your examination." Having won at least part of her argument with Schlacht, something of her customary wryness was returning. "The problem, you see, is that there are minute amounts of blood present in saliva, and the enzyme is actually present in the blood. I first had to isolate the blood element, then isolate the enzyme in the blood element, and then chemically analyze the enzyme. So many successive steps of isolation and analysis reduce the accuracy of the resultant data. I am reasonably certain of the chemicals involved, but less than certain of their relative amounts or the nature of their bonding,"

  Schlacht seemed annoyed. "Fräulein Loewenstein, I was under the impression that you had made a breakthrough."

  She seemed surprised at his reaction. "Herr Colonel, this is a breakthrough! We have discovered the existence of an enzyme in Kaldy’s blood which does not exist in human blood, and we have isolated its components. All we need do now is ascertain the ratios involved, and we are well on our way to discovering the fundamental nature of the process of transformation."

  "And how do you propose to determine the ratios?" Weyrauch asked.

  Petra seemed irritated at the question. "By the application of the scientific method, of course, Herr Doctor. We shall experiment with various ratios. After all, I have a general idea of the ratios of chemical to chemical...my data cannot be that inaccurate!...so what I need to do now is to establish them accurately, by experimentation."

  "Which, of course, is what I have been busy preparing," Festhaller broke in. "I have had an experimental animal brought to Fräulein Loewenstein’s laboratory. And, as I said when I entered a few moments ago, everything is ready."

  "Good," Schlacht responded, rising from his seat. "I shall accompany you, Fräulein, and observe the results of the experiment. I will be meeting with Reichsführer Himmler later this week, and I would like to be able to give him a firsthand account of what happens." Schlacht preceded Petra and Festhaller out the door and Weyrauch made to follow them. He turned to his wife and asked, "Louisa? You can come along if you wish." She shook her head silently and remained where she was, not looking at him. Weyrauch shrugged and then left the room.

  He caught up to the others in the hallway and as he approached them he said, "Helmuth, I feel obliged to point out that experiments conducted upon animals are not always accurate in what they indicate about human beings. Differences in metabolism, body weight, genetic structure, all make it often difficult..."

  "What are you prattling on about, Gottfried?" Schlacht asked brusquely.

  "Well, I am merely reminding you that whatever results we obtain from experimenting on a rat or a dog, even a monkey, may not..."

  "You may put your mind at ease, Gottfried," Schlacht said. "The experimental animal is a Jew." Weyrauch stopped walking, startled by Schlacht’s words, and watched as the Colonel, Festhaller and Petra continued on down the hall toward the laboratory. After a moment’s hesitation, he followed after them.

  The door of Schlacht’s office opened and Louisa von Weyrauch walked slowly out into the hall, her head bowed slightly and her eyes red. As she walked in the direction opposite the one the others had taken, every movement of her body bespoke resignation and despair. She was neither stopped nor questioned by the guards as she proce
eded down the stairs to the dungeons of the Ragoczy Palace, for they had all grown accustomed to seeing her and her husband going down to visit with the two prisoners who, for reasons to which the guards were not privy, had been kept at the Palace rather than sent off to the camps with the others of their kind.

  Kaldy and Blasko were in the same cell, and would remain together until an hour or so before sunset, at which time the younger Gypsy would be removed to another cell where he would be bound with the wolfsbane-laden chains. Tonight was the second night of the full moon, and after tomorrow morning Kaldy would once again be afforded a four-week respite from his agony.

  The guard unlocked the cell door and held it open for Louisa. He locked it behind her and stood back and watched carefully as Louisa said in Italian, "I don’t know what to do, Blasko, I just don’t know what to do." She began to weep.

  Blasko stifled the instinct to reach out and pat her hand comfortingly, knowing that the guard would react immediately to a Gypsy touching a German woman. He smiled at her and said in Romansch, "What can anyone do, Donna? You are not alone in your helplessness."

  "That chemist thinks she may have..." She paused, not knowing how to explain chemical analysis to this untutored man. "The scientist thinks that she has discovered something in Kaldy’s body which causes him to change form."

  "Indeed," Kaldy said, also in Romansch out of deference to his friend. His voice was not exactly disinterested, but he was much less intrigued than Louisa had expected. "The news would be much more welcome if they had discovered how to kill me."