Child of the Journey

by Berliner, Janet

  She carefully folds the yellowed pages of the letter and places it among others in a tin, removes a brick from the wall, inserts the tin, and replaces the brick. "Otto Hahn is with me every moment. His love guides me in every experiment we perform."

  "And if we achieve critical mass?"

  "He'll be there too. Especially then."

  "Even if it means giving the Nazis--"

  "The power of the atom? In exchange for guaranteed freedom for our people? Yes, Doktor Hahn will be there should that happen, even if only in spirit."

  The younger woman stretches out on her cot, her head upon her extended arm, and looks at Lise with loving admiration. "You never expect to see him again, and yet you go on...."

  Lise chuckles sadly. "When the Nazis split us, they split our atom. If you and I and Professor Heisenberg split the real atom, Doktor Hahn and I will remain forever split. They'll see to that. A female, Jewish Nobel candidate working alongside a Gentile Nobel Laureate who preaches the Jewish science he practices? That smacks of miscegenation, even though I was raised Protestant. The Nazis wouldn't hear of our being together again. But while we're apart...well, there is always hope. So we continue working."

  The younger woman sighs. Despite lines of worry and overwork that crease her forehead, she now seems at ease. "Will I ever be as wise as you? My Franz may only be a laborer, but he's more knowledgeable about life than I'll ever be. And you with your--"

  "My hopes--dead hopes--for a Nobel?"

  "Yes. Being your lab assistant is an honor, Doktor Meitner. Sometimes, though, I wish you'd been my mother."

  Lise frowns petulantly. "So you could have begun studying radium as a toddler? I would have made a terrible parent. I can see you now, a two-year-old worrying about nuclear properties and chain reactions." She reaches for another cigarette.

  "And about your chain smoking." Judith takes the cigarette and wags a finger of admonition at Lise, who snatches at the cigarette and laughs when she misses.

  Her laughter dissipates as the resonant chords of a Bach fugue played on a pipe organ fills the room.

  "He's at it again," Judith says, suddenly sullen. "They only give us four or five hours' rest, yet every night Heisenberg plays--"

  "He's a very good musician. Sometimes I think he'd rather devote his life to Bach's theories than to Bohr's."

  "I hate him," Judith says bitterly. "He sold out to the Nazis. He's worse than Göring. Werner Heisenberg has the capacity to take a moral stand. The world respects him. Instead he simply gave in. At least he could have emigrated! Einstein did, and Fermi, and Slizard...who knows how many others? Now, with Bohr gone as well--"

  "Heisenberg has no love for Hitler."

  "He lectured in Switzerland and visited America." Judith says. "He didn't have to return."

  "Should he have left his family behind?"

  "Others did."

  "Others did not have the weight of the scientific community on their shoulders."

  "They bore the weight of the Jewish community," Judith says. "That's why they're helping the Allies."

  Lise looks pained. "And who is helping European Jews while the United States chases the atom's Holy Grail? Has so much as a single conventional bomb been dropped on a death camp? The Allies surely know of the camps by now, yet nothing is done."

  "Our people would die if the camps were bombed!"

  "They'll die anyway, except those you and I manage to save." Lise's hand trembles as she lights a cigarette. "Why not destroy the slaughterhouses and slow down the killing?"

  "Everyone will die, if we give Hitler what he wants," Judith says morosely. "I don't know why you agreed to this insanity! And me a part of it! A scientific breakthrough here...ten thousand saved." She moves her hand around on the cot as if picking up and setting down chessmen. "Another breakthrough there...ten thousand more. What happens when we run out of breakthroughs and must deliver the real thing? What good will have become of all this! Are you so naïve as to think Hitler will keep his promise to send all Jews to that homeland he's creating in Madagascar?"

  Bending closely, Lise says in a low voice, "We pray to Jehovah that the war will end before the bomb is born."

  "And in the meantime?"

  "In the meantime...as long as the Nazis remain divided about Jewish science, they will continue to dole out to a dozen research facilities what little heavy water there is available, instead of concentrating efforts and supplies. The bomb could be delayed for a decade."

  Lise's voice has risen earnestly. Judith puts a finger to her lips.

  "The music drowns out our whispers," she says. "Why else do you think Heisenberg plays the pipes for half an hour every night, rather than immediately returning to his family in Hechingen? Even he isn't that much of a music enthusiast. He gives us time to talk--to assess--to plan."

  "Doktor Heisenberg knows of our deal with Hitler?"

  "Of course he knows," the older woman says impatiently. "Is he a part of it? I'm not sure. He's very complex, especially morally. He feels that if Germany doesn't have the bomb, we won't be able to stop the Allies from using theirs, should they create one. And yet...give the Luftwaffe the bomb? Who can say what Heisenberg thinks! You think he wasn't upset when the papers called him a White Jew?"

  "The usual Nazi logic. Destroy the best."

  "That's why there's hope! You bash in the brains of a wolf and it may go on snapping, but not for long."

  Judith curls into a ball, to sleep; the cot has no blanket. Lise reaches to turn off the light, but the door opens and an obese man with a pink and white complexion enters. Judith jerks upright, crossing her arms protectively across her bosom.

  "I have two lion cubs at my home in Berlin," the man says. "They remind me of you ladies. Cuddly but dangerous."

  Lise stands and, with an air of arrogance, leans against the wall and drags on the cigarette. "Is this your idea of a surprise inspection, Feldmarschall Göring?" She blows smoke in his direction. "Play games with this physicist and you can bet your jackboots that her mind goes blank in the lab tomorrow!"

  "Someday, Doktor," he says genially, "that mouth of yours is going to get your tongue torn out."

  "Someday I will be eliminated like the troublesome burr that I am. Until then, you need me. I know it. You know it."

  "That day might come sooner than you think." Göring licks a palm and smoothes back his hair. "In the meantime, let us not forget that uncooperative laboratory assistants arrive in Auschwitz by the boxcar load...as do their families."

  Her face anguished, Judith puts her head against her fists.

  "You promised--we work without provocation," Lise says.

  He looks at her with disdain. "And you promised delivery. Until then, promises are just...promises."----

  Sol awoke panting from the stuffiness of the room. He was not in the quarry, as he expected, but back in the barracks. Had he ever left? The sky was dark and the moon, framed in the window, filled the barracks with liquid silver. Hans was standing with one hand gripping the barracks's noose. He gazed toward the sentry tower.

  Taking hold of the next bunk edge, Sol once again slid from the cramped space and crept among the sleepers to stand beside his friend. The camp's gate was open, and people were being herded inside. "Another pogrom," Sol said. "If only they knew how much easier it would be for them if they died now." He took the noose from Hans and tugged at it.

  Hans laughed bitterly. "I've heard the dead are taken to the crematoria in Gotha and Eisenback. Also Weimar. That's where my father has his farm. The soil there is being spread with a new fertilizer. Gray-white. They sell human ashes to the farmers, Solomon. They are mad, all of them."

  "Shush. You'll bring the Kapo down on us."

  Hans turned back to the window. "Know why I was imprisoned? For watching a couple copulate in a city park outside of Stuttgart. For watching! The man was a Party official. I thought they would let me go...you know, like the man who goes to the Kaiserhof with his secretary and meets his brother-in-law
having a night on the town. They are silenced by mutual guilt."

  Solomon put an arm across Hans' shoulder and gave his friend's upper arm an affectionate squeeze. The boy moaned in his sleep.

  "I love that boy, Solomon." Hans' eyes welled with tears. "He has dignity far beyond his years, but they're taking it from him."

  "He is young and strong."

  "Young enough to believe in God and good men of government?"

  "He will survive. You and I will see to that."

  "You will have to do it alone, Solomon." Hans gripped a bunk post, his face wracked with anguish. "Sooner or later, they will get me. Ten years ago some sociologist decided there were over a million homosexual men in Germany. Himmler rounded the number up to two million and swore to rid the Reich of them all. In the so-called Dark Ages, homosexuals were drowned in bogs or rolled in blankets for use as faggots during witch burnings."

  "I heard talk that you pink-triangles are to be marched to the camp brothel. If you perform with a woman, you'll be released into the civilian labor force."

  "Perform!" Hans grabbed his groin with such hatred, it seemed he wanted to tear off his genitals.

  "If you refuse, they'll kill you," Sol said.

  "They'll kill us anyway." Forehead against the post, Hans said quietly, "When I was making movies one after another, working literally night and day, UFA put me on anti-depressants. For my mental health, they said. They had me working seven days a week. I was so tired, and always afraid for my brother. Their damned anti-depressants gave me priapism. Know what that is, my friend?"

  Solomon shook his head.

  "An eternal erection." He looked at Sol through eyes filled with agony. "The pain--you cannot believe the pain, Solomon. The beatings we endure is nothing compared to it." He released a slow breath. "Priapism results in a form of gangrene," he said.

  "Your name will become a part of medical history," the voice in the Ethiopian vision echoed. "The hospital's a death trap for both of us," Sol said.

  A movement outside caught his eye. He watched Pleshdimer cross the yard, a thick-necked murderer who, as Hempel's human watchdog, had found his calling in Sachsenhausen. To him, passion and cruelty were synonymous, but the fear he inspired in all of the prisoners was multiplied tenfold for Misha, who had several times seen the man outside the camp.

  "HEIL HITLER!" the loudspeakers boomed. "PRISONERS ARISE!"

  Less than ten minutes till roll call. Sol had to hurry in order to have precious seconds in which to relieve himself in the holes in the floor of the room that adjoined the barracks.

  "I'd sell my soul to see Hempel dead," Hans said. He lumbered over to the sleeping boy and shook him gently to arouse him.

  "You'd sell your soul for a bowl of semolina soup," a voice from Sol's childhood whispered in his head.

  As quickly as he could, he straightened his bunk, collected his bag with its dry piece of bread--remnant of the previous day's rations--and relieved himself. Still, he and Hans and Misha only just made it outside in time for roll call. Holding a roster on a clipboard, Pleshdimer made his morning announcements, his huge forehead furrowed in concentration.

  "Three, sev-en, sev-en, ze-ro four. Hos-spit-tal." He used a forefinger as a pointer. Gap-toothed, he looked up and grinned. "Today you work in the quarry. When you get back they will examinate you, Jew."

  Sol felt a sick, sinking feeling in his gut. "Your name will become a part of medical history."

  "Nine, se-ven...." Pleshdimer stopped and pointed at Misha. "The Haupsturmführer wants you in his quarters when you get back."

  Sol saw raw fear in the boy's eyes.

  "Is this your season of sadness, Solomon Freund?" a voice in Sol's head asked.

  "The world's season of sadness," he answered, joining the column headed for the gate and the quarry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Terrified of what the day would bring, Misha dawdled alongside Hans. He knew that eventually he would have to join the line of shuffling humans leaving for the quarry, but every minute he stayed behind seemed like a gift of time, delaying what lay at the day's end.

  "I was watching. Listening," a man said, emerging from the closest building to address Misha. "Do whatever you must to survive. Someone has to tell them about this when it's over. You are young and strong. You can make it."

  As quickly as the man had appeared, he was gone.

  Hans held onto Misha's shoulder. "Bite off the bastard's cock if he tries anything," he whispered into the boy's ear.

  "How can I do it, Uncle Hans?" Misha asked.

  "You bite down, like this--"

  "No. Don't make jokes." The boy shook his head impatiently. "I meant, how can I survive?"

  "You can because you must," Hans said. He prodded Misha into the line before he continued talking, very softly, so as not to be overheard by the Kapo. "You must think of yourself as a soldier, defending yourself against the enemy."

  "But I have no weapons."

  "Yes, you do." Hans paused. "Listen carefully. You have weapons, but they are hidden. It is simply a question of finding them."

  Pleshdimer was heading toward them down the line. Automatically, they stopped whispering.

  "Let me give you some suggestions," Hans went on when the Kapo had passed. "The first thing you must learn to do is cry."

  Misha shook his head, remembering his promise to himself.

  "It washes out the eyes and is good for the soul. If you think you have forgotten how, I can teach you. I am a great actor. I can cry on command."

  "What else?"

  "You must think about something you were going to do, something you were struggling for before all of this--"

  "Like my bar mitzvah?"

  "Precisely. Remember your lessons and repeat them to yourself as if you know with absolute certainty that your bar mitzvah will come to pass. I have been to a bar mitzvah. I know that it requires much work, much planning. You must plan every detail, down to the shine on your shoes. Debate the menu with yourself, day after day. Month after month if need be. Wake up with it in your mind. Go to sleep thinking about it."

  None of that made sense to Misha, but he stored it away in his head so that he could think about it later.

  "One more thing," Hans said. "I met a man once, from Poland. He told me something I will never forget. He said that life is nothing more or less than a huge ledger. On one side, there is a list of all of the good things that have happened to you, and all of the good things that you have done. On the other, a list of all of the bad things that have happened to you, and," he smiled gently down at Misha, "the bad things you have done--even if they were not done on purpose. If you have any luck at all, the good side will always be longer than the bad side. Only when that is not true is life no longer worth living."

  "I don't understand."

  "You must keep such a ledger, Misha. It will become one of your best weapons."

  "But I have no paper, Uncle Hans. No pencil. Even if I did, they would take it away from me."

  Hans chuckled. "And you told me not to joke," he said. "I had forgotten that children were so literal. You must keep the ledger in your mind, Misha. That way you will never run out of pages or lead."

  He stopped talking and left Misha to his thoughts. What nonsense, Misha thought. Ledgers and bar mitzvahs and tears. Those were not weapons. Guns were weapons. Hateful things, like guns and whips and--

  Pleshdimer returned down the line. "Good thing you stopped your chit-chat," he said, jabbing Misha in the thigh with his stick. "I was about to stop it myself by stuffing this in your mouth." He waved the stick in front of Misha's face.

  Misha shrunk from it. I hate you, he thought. Hate you, hate you, hate you.

  That was it, he knew suddenly. There was an event he could plan down to the last detail, and he did have a weapon after all. In fact if hatred was, as he suspected, the most powerful weapon he owned, he had just discovered within himself an entire arsenal.

  Misha picked up his feet and squared hi
s shoulders. As soon as he could, he would tell Sol about this, he thought, watching the line snake around a bend in the road. Uncle Hans, too. Then the three of them could become warriors together against the enemy.

  With that in mind, he opened a page in his thought-ledger and began to make his first list: enemies on one side, friends on the other.

  Without knowing why, he included amongst his friends the man in the corpsman's uniform, the one who had stepped out of the shadows to tell him that he had to survive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  How long was it since he and Misha and Hans had been reassigned from the quarry? Sol wondered. He was beginning to lose track of time again, the way he had done in the sewer. Here, it felt worse. In the sewer there had been hope...and darkness to keep him from seeing his own physical degeneration.

  Here, he not only saw his own, he saw others'.

  Misha worked in the morgue next door to the Pathologie, where prisoners were experimented upon--vivisection and dissection on a stainless steel table with sloped troughs for collecting blood. The boy's job was to pry out gold teeth and search for gemstones in the rectums of corpses awaiting transport in Oranienburg garbage trucks to the city's crematorium. He said he did not mind it too much because of his new friend, Franz, a corpsman who had apparently dared question the huge casualty list at the camp and earned himself an assignment as Pathologie guard. He was the same man who, Misha said, had spoken to the boy kindly on the last morning of his quarry duty; a German of apparent compassion who, upon occasion, sneaked Misha a chocolate bar, which Misha shared with Sol and Hans.

  The choice, he insisted, was his.

  Hans had been reassigned to the brickworks, then to the Klinker factory's ships in the Oranienburg Kanal, to the holds and the heat and the dust. His job was to shovel coal and rubble up onto sloped platforms. More often than not, he said, it fell back on him.

  His multiple injuries had been compounded by a hacking cough. Judging by the color and particles in his sputum, he was already a victim of the early stages of black lung disease. His skin was becoming permanently discolored; any attempt at a smile caused his lips to crack into ridges of blood and dust. He was also forced to perform in the brothel twice a day and often several times on Sundays, when the Klinker factory closed to give management a rest.