Child of the Journey

by Berliner, Janet

  He dropped to his knees, found and lifted the sewer grate.

  After the night's crisp air, the sewer's stench billowed up like a tangible force. He held his breath, lowered himself onto the two-by-twelve and stretched upward to pull down the grate. It clanged shut. He groped for the boxes of provisions, wanting to touch them not so much for reassurance as for a focal point of existence. They were the immediate essentials of life, though how long a life was anyone's guess. He felt certain only that, for now, the sewer was the one refuge left to him in Berlin.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Miriam had thought of Sol incarcerated in a camp for so long that it had become habit, like a bitter pill she'd had to swallow daily. Now that he was here, beneath her feet, she found herself tiptoeing around the shop. It was as if she were walking on his head and feared that she was causing him physical pain.

  Every now and then she would forget for a moment and return to the images she had called forth over the years: Sol being beaten, starved, worked like a laborer. Then a board would creak beneath her soles, or the wind would whistle through the space between the shop door and the floor, and she would start guiltily, as if by forgetting she had somehow let him down. Again.

  She had much to think about. She would have to be careful not to let Erich see a change in her. She would have to contact Perón. Most importantly, she would have to find a way to go down and see Sol--impossible unless both of the Weissers and not just Herr Weisser took the day off. She had been instructed to come in today because, he had said, a friend was unexpectedly coming into town and he wanted to be free to spend time with him. With any luck, his wife, Inge, would develop a headache, or remember a commitment to play cards, and Miriam would be left alone in the shop. By now, Sol would need food, water, possibly even medicines of the damp had make him ill.

  Whatever it took, Miriam thought, she had to persuade him to go back to safety, to Amsterdam. And, if possible, she would send young Misha there with him. Though he might not agree with her at this moment, outside of finding his parents--a next-to-impossible task--reuniting the boy with the beadle would be the best thing she could do for him. She had been happy to find him a temporary haven with the underground group led by the furrier's son, but that was over now. She felt guilty about having been the person whose message had placed him in danger. On the other hand, they had already made Misha a message runner by then, and it had been only a matter of time before he would have taken it into his head to begin once more the futile search for his parents. All in all, he was better off where he was now, in Baden-Baden.

  "Why are you staring into space? Is there no work to be done?"

  The bell signaling her entry into the shop coincided with Inge Weisser's first criticism of the day. She had determined from the start to turn Miriam into Aschenbrödel, and Cinderella Miriam stayed. No matter what she did--not so much to please the woman but to keep the peace--Erich's mother felt obliged to spew venom whenever her husband was in earshot. Since he had entered behind her, this was one of those times.

  She shed her fur, threw it at Miriam with a brusque instruction to handle it carefully and hang it up, and emplaced herself at the end of the counter. Her husband entered behind her, followed closely by none other than Deputy Commandant Otto Hempel.

  "Sit, sit," Herr Weisser said, pulling out one of the chairs at the corner table. He pushed a box of cigars toward the man. "Help yourself. How about a schnapps to go with it? You are, after all, on holiday."

  Hempel shrugged off his coat and smiled a feral smile. "A schnapps? In the morning? Why not. It's cold enough out there to freeze a nun's tits."

  Weisser brought forth the bottle of cognac--his second best, Miriam noted. "How are things at the camp?"

  "Tiring. Tiring. Those stinking Jews will never learn their place. I, for one, will be delighted when we have rid ourselves of all of them. And here? How is business?"

  "Wonderful, Hauptsturmführer. We are most comfortable, Inge and I--thanks in great part to your...assistance. I have often wondered why God selected me for such good fortune."

  "God? Perhaps." Hempel sipped at his cognac, put down his glass, lifted his cigar. "I suppose that makes me His instrument. Pity. I had hoped to take the credit. As I told you, I have great admiration for your son. When I came to you, it was because I wanted to ingratiate myself, shall we say, with his beloved family." He waved airily with the other hand. "I wish getting rid of the rest of them were as simple as that one. I regret not having kept the Iron Cross as a memento. You don't happen to have it, do you?"

  Miriam froze. Though she knew that Sol could not possibly hear what these two disgusting excuses for human beings were saying, she almost expected him to intuit the scene and come flying up the stairs from the sewer, hands outstretched to grab Hempel by the throat--if she could restrain herself from doing it first.

  Perhaps fortunately for her, the shop was invaded by a noisy group of officers. Stomping their feet to shake off the rain that had begun to fall, they entered the shop to buy supplies to take to Kaverne. The disarray, the noise and dust of refurbishing, did not seem to bother these officers of the Reich who gathered there at all times of the day or night--to play cards, drink, smoke cigars, and exchange stories about their conquests.

  On the one hand, Miriam thought, their presence made Sol's hiding place a more dangerous choice; on the other, the combination of their noise, and that of sawing and hammering, served to cover whatever mishaps he might have in the darkness of the sewer.

  Like everything in life, it was a toss-up.

  She picked up the leather dice-cup from the end of the counter, shook it, and turned it over. Naturally, she thought, looking at her impossibly high score. When there are no stakes, I win.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Someone, probably the beadle, had enriched the sewer with one of Sol's favorite treatises on the Kabbalah. The text was written in an ornate and frustrating style by an anonymous sixteenth-century physician accused of initiating impotence through sorcery. The man was found guilty of ligature, a necromancer's term that would later be incorporated into medicine.

  The treatise appeared to touch upon such peripheral aspects of the Kabbalah that, at first reading, Solomon had thought the doctor lacked the acuity to dig deeper. Later, he had come to believe that the author had been afraid to go beyond the edges. Each rereading confirmed the clarity behind the words.

  Our familiar, physical world, the author concluded, was only one part of a vast system of worlds, most of which were spiritual in their essence. That did not mean the spiritual realms existed somewhere else, but rather that they existed in different dimensions of being and that they interacted so much with physical reality that they could be considered counterparts of one another.

  After six or seven rereadings by guttering candlelight, the physician's interpretation took on an increasing ring of truth.

  "Spiritual realms exist in different dimensions of being," Sol summarized aloud. "They interact with physical reality. Thus, the spiritual and physical worlds must be counterparts of one another."

  If gradation of being overlapped, he thought, could it not be possible that time did also?

  By Wednesday he wished the visions would come--to offset the loneliness. If they came, he would try to place them within the context of his new theory. The visions did not come. To slow his bodily functions and to preserve his supplies, he ate and drank as little as possible. Thirst plagued him, but by the fourth or fifth day, he lost his appetite. What little he ate, he consumed out of boredom.

  Boisterous commands erupted in the cabaret. Every now and then he heard hammering and the sound of furniture being scooted. Kaverne, he guessed with deepening fear, was being renovated. When the racket stopped, light laughter, men's voices, and military songs filtered down at all hours. He figured that meant that those who frequented the new club, SS or Gestapo, or Wehrmacht assigned to political roundups, pulled duty at odd times.

  Even during the rare silences, he feared
venturing up into the cabaret. Someone might come in unexpectedly, or he might leave evidence behind. An accidentally moved object might bring down Gestapo vultures.

  Once, he stole up into the tobacco shop, amazed to find it empty after having heard people moving around up there at all hours. He had his hand on the door latch when he saw the sentry outside, patrolling the sidewalk between the shop and the cabaret. Keeping watch while those inside drank and sang. And, as likely, pretending to guard against Jewish assassins eager to murder good German soldiers.

  Descending, Sol occupied himself with removing bricks at the sewer's east end, hoping to squirm into the major system, if need be. He succeeded only in substantially increasing the seepage.

  On Sunday the tobacco shop, like the cabaret, was filled with rowdy laughter and the tromp of boots. Once, soft footfalls descended the tobacco-cellar stairs; Sol rose to his feet, certain it must be Miriam, only to have his hopes dashed when Frau Weisser curtly called her upstairs. Miriam did not come down again.

  The night brought greater laughter above, greater depression below. By the next Tuesday, he cared only about the candles. Once they were gone and he was in darkness...what madness might set in?

  He had read about experiments conducted in France's Chateau Caverns. Researchers discovered that subjects in dark isolation experienced metabolic changes. Biological time-clocks malfunctioned, approximating a forty-eight rather than twenty-four-hour cycle. People slept fourteen hours and stayed awake thirty-four, though their minds insisted their bodies underwent no changes.

  Given the endless partying in the cabaret and the fact that the shop was staying open later and later to serve the new clientele, calculating time became impossible. The longer he was down in the sewer, the less he was able to tell how closely his mental time-count resembled reality. He grew more lethargic, less able to follow thoughts through to logical conclusions.

  Have to keep moving, keep thinking., he told himself.

  Chin against chest, he shambled back and forth, back and forth across the disassembled crates, through the sewer slosh that with maddening regularity raised or lowered around his shoes like part of an undercity tide--sixty steps there and sixty steps back, ducking under the boards below the grates at each end of the sewer, the distance seemingly preordained. Concentrating on parts he had memorized from the treatise, while his brain ticked off sixty steps...turn, duck...another sixty. A minute's slow walk...one and two and three--regular as a metronome in a sitting room where proper children performed Mozart and Mendelsohn and knew nothing of Nazis and the notion of world domination. Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, duck and, sixty, turn.

  The seepage dripped as if playing counterpoint, forcing him to remember other music--most especially the Brahms Sonata he had heard Beadle Cohen play that first afternoon in the music room of the Judaica library on Behrenstrasse. The man was a violinist, a pianist, a wizard at setting Victrolas at precisely the right speed. "I am responsible for the upkeep of the temple," he had told Sol, "but I am equally responsible for the upkeep of my own wits and soul."

  Aside from his duties at the temple, and his love of influencing the minds of children, only three things in his life mattered--books, music, and the study of the Kabbalah. Yet, except for sporadic gifts like The Life of Luria, the beadle had not spoken with Sol in any depth about Jewish mysticism until after the deaths of Rathenau and Grace and their discussion about dybbuks and lost souls and prophesies.

  Searching for balance, Sol had gone to the library seeking something to help him overcome his sense of loss and inadequacy. Too short to reach a top bookshelf and too impatient to retrieve the library ladder, he had looked around for help--and there was the beadle.

  Within that seemingly simple act of having discovered him in time of need, the beadle said, lay the first lesson of the ten Sefirot: the existence of fundamental forces of divine flow. The beadle's interpretation of the Jewish mystics, Solomon was later to realize, was tempered by his appreciation of the science of Einstein and Planck. Before God created light, and time therefore began, the beadle told him, the universe was random...but no longer; God did not roll dice. The aisles and avenues the free will can walk were divinely mapped, the journey preordained but not predestined. Beadle Cohen's being in the library was no accident, he argued, for God had known since before time began that he would be there.

  The universe according to the beadle...as orderly as the number of steps in the sewer.

  At their next meeting, the beadle talked of the Zohar, which he considered the foundation of the Kabbalah and the metaphysical basis of Judaism; he also gave Sol more books, dustier than usual.

  Sensing his parents would disapprove, Sol had confined his reading to the old man's drafty garret above the library, with its two tiny windows shaped like a dove's wings. He had said little to his parents about his discussions with the beadle, even when his school marks dropped and Papa's questions and anger surfaced.

  After a year's study, he had understood only that the Kabbalah encompassed a wealth of thinking one could not comprehend fully even in several lifetimes....

  The last candle guttered and died.

  He stretched out his arms as if to keep the walls from closing in, and stumbled onward. The muck again broke over his shoes. When he pulled off his shoes and wet socks, his flesh seemed puffy and slick. Something slimy was attached to his ankle. A leech.

  He shuddered, and felt like hurling the treatise into the sewage. What use was it to him now! What use had his obsession with the printed page ever been! Erich had been right all along: in a world spinning out of control--a dreidel with blanks instead of letters--learning for which there was no immediate and practical application was effete snobbery.

  The muck continued to rise.

  He rolled up his trousers and paced on. Fifty-nine...duck...sixty...turn.

  A rat, mewling, scuttled between his legs.

  He threw crate parts atop one another, climbed on the makeshift island. How many days, he wondered, since he had seen Miriam? Made love to her? She knew the extent of his provisions and the health risk of staying in the sewer. She would get him out.

  Something nuzzled his ankle.

  He cried out, drew up his knees. The rat scurried off, but soon padded back through the slosh. Sol imagined it up on hind legs, nose twitching, sniffing the air, watching him for signs of weakness. He hoisted himself onto the two-by-twelve.

  A canteen and a seaman's bag containing what little food was left hung near him. At least that was out of reach of the rodent! Digging into the bag, he found cheese stuck to the brandy bottle.

  He peeled it off, ate most of it, threw the rest toward the other end of the tunnel, and immediately regretted the action. Knowing food was near would make the rat more aggressive.

  The rat scampered, and he laughed. Like one of Erich's dogs gone to fetch! A wheezing seized him; he doubled over, coughing.

  Trembling, he climbed down to the rickety island, trying to catch his breath. His lungs sounded as if they were filled with fluid. Sweat stung his eyes, and spectral motes of light danced before him in the darkness. In his desire to hear something living, he listened for the rat--imagining it fat and furry and asleep, dreaming of cheese and human flesh.

  The coughing began again, pain piercing his lungs.

  "Hear that, Doctor Rat? What do you think? Pneumonia?" He fought to keep his breathing steady, but the slightest inhalation sent a cartilaginous crackling through his ears and chest.

  "This keeps up--you'll have a real meal to remember!"

  For a long time he tried desperately to hold onto the vestiges of consciousness despite his feverish sweating and shivering. In the dark, only the rat and the sweat that ran in rivulets down his forehead and back seemed tangible.

  The rodent stopped running when he fed it--bread, cheese, nearly a kilo of rancid corned beef that he found in the bottom of the seaman's bag, wrapped in a necktie.

  A necktie, in a crypt! Sol chuckled--coughed--went on with the ga
me. He sent the rat scurrying for food. He placed morsels in a circle around himself, as if he and the food were a ritualistic offering. He slept, sensing the rat running across his legs, sniffing his armpits and crotch, licking salt from his hands and hair. He began to welcome the possibility of being bitten. Pain was reality, was it not?

  He shook the canteen. Precious little left. Seepage dripped onto his shoulders. He tried to stand, but his senses were awry. Which were the walls--what the floor? A paroxysm of coughing shook him. His head pounded. Tottering like an old man, he reached for the walls or the plank to steady himself, unsure they would be there, then sat back down, cradling the canteen like an infant.

  "As the result of the liberation of Ethiopia by our Italian friends", a gravelly voice said in German, "we have been given a unique opportunity."

  "Go to hell!" Sol waved his hands, pleased at being able to muster the strength to react. The canteen, its cap unscrewed, slipped from him. He lunged...clutched darkness, fell into the muck, struggled to right himself.

  "Pardon me," he gasped as he crawled back onto the wood. "My mistake. Welcome to Hell!"

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "Welcome to the world of the dead!" the voice replied.

  A stench like that of Limburger cheese. A burst of light. A round of soft applause.

  Sol lost interest in the canteen and turned toward the sound, for a blue glow told him a vision had come to divert him----

  ----A bulb in a metal collar hangs garishly from a slatted-board ceiling. A tall man dressed in a surgical gown and gloves hits his head on the bulb and sets it in motion. The increased circle of light reveals Emanuel, legs spread, naked, strapped into a chair.