Child of the Journey

by Berliner, Janet

  "My apologies, Herr Oberst. I was told to deliver this package immediately." The messenger swung his knapsack off his back and pulled out a receipt book, pen, and a small box wrapped in butcher paper.

  Erich signed and dated the proffered page. The messenger noted the time after checking his watch, stepped back, and again saluted. It irritated Erich, having to comply.

  The young man lowered his arm he looked at Erich expectantly.

  "Well?" Erich asked. "What are you waiting for?"

  "Are you--are you going to open it, sir?"

  "Is it any of your business?"

  The messenger suddenly looked flushed. "I'm sorry, sir. It's just that everyone at headquarters is talking about," he glanced around and lowered his voice, "the project, sir. It's damn exciting!"

  "And you thought you could carry back another piece of gossip to fuel the fire," Erich said, looking at him sternly. "I'm afraid you will have to return empty-handed."

  "Yes sir. Forgive me, sir."

  The young man turned and hurried toward his bike. Erich waited until Krayller had let him out the gate before he examined the box. He did not open it immediately but rather held back, checking its heft, as though it were a birthday or Christmas gift.

  The butcher paper had no return name or address. He ripped if off and tossed it aside. The box proved to be likewise unmarked. As he opened it and pulled out a jar with a metallic-gold lid, a premonition of fear mixed with an urge to kill someone gripped him with such force that he almost dropped the jar. Then, gingerly, he held it up to the light.

  Bile filled his throat. He placed a hand on his chest and sucked a short breath to keep from retching. There was no mistaking the contents--a set of purplish genitalia. Shaking, cursing his weak stomach, he set the jar down on the stoop.

  An envelope the size of an invitation and embossed with fleur-de-lis lay in the bottom of the box. He tore it open.

  Inside, neatly folded, he found a death certificate.

  Solomon Isaac Freund, prisoner 37704. Adverse reaction to anesthesia during voluntary surgery. Cause of death: heart failure. 10 June 1939. Detained 1 January 1938, Stuttgart. Entry into camp system 3 January 1938, Marienbad. Relocated Sachsenhausen, 14 August 1938.

  He refolded the paper slowly, stupefied by the enormity of the irony. For over a year the lies he had been telling Miriam had been the truth. Solomon, in Sachsenhausen...Hempel's camp! But how! When had he returned to Germany? And why Stuttgart!... Something to do with Miriam's past? Had he contacted her? Did she know the truth?

  He sat down and ransacked his mind, trying to recall if Miriam had acted strangely about the time Solomon returned, but it was too long ago, and her moods were so volatile anyway! Perhaps, he thought hopefully, Solomon had been on his way to Berlin and was arrested before he ever contacted...

  My God, what was he thinking! Solomon dead, that bastard Hempel surely somehow responsible, and he was hoping that...! To his horror, he found that he had unconsciously put a hand on the jar. He lurched away, then swiveled so his back was to the thing, and shuddered. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

  His mind sprang back to the paper. He shook as he fought to unfold it. There! He jabbed at the information as thought to point it out to someone.

  Designation: pink.

  Pink! Solomon, arrested not as a Jew but as a queer! Surely there was some mistake!

  His mind raced through memories as if through the narrow, chaotic streets of some medieval city, reason and feverish logic opening doors long battened down as though against a plague. For the first time in his life the past made sense to him.

  That was why Solomon would wince whenever anyone made derogatory remarks about queers! Why he had to be goaded into buying that hot little whore with the banana-shaped tits, only to emerge afterward so repulsed with himself that he looked sick. That was why Miriam...

  So that was her obsession with Solomon! Not because he was having her every night after they closed up shop, but because he wouldn't. Or--he had to cool down hysterical laughter bubbling up at the back of his brain--or because Solomon couldn't.

  He thought about Miriam, that Christmas in the apartment. Wanting him, not wanting him, seducing and denying, until he had no other choice but to take her by force. She probably had not spread her legs for someone since returning to Berlin, since touring out of...Stuttgart.

  Stuttgart!

  Could it be possible that Solomon had returned to Germany not for Miriam, but for something buried in her past that he thought might resurrect the manhood he had never had?

  Solomon Freund, a fucking queer! Erich looked at the jar with angry disgust. All that time Solomon had squired Miriam, claimed to be in love with her, when in reality he had desired...The thought made him ill.

  Desired me.

  That was why Solomon had not abandoned their friendship when Erich joined the Party...why Miriam seemed happy about Madagascar. It was not Erich Alois she hated, he decided, for though he had raped her--well, sort of raped--that union had given her what she wanted most. A child. And now...a chance to raise that child outside Nazi Germany. It all made sense.

  He stood up. He would give her more than that chance, he vowed to himself. Once he had the colony established and in running order, then if she wanted to raise the boy as a Jew, he would consider it.

  Ready to head back to the shepherds, he strode around to the kitchen, opened the lid of one of the garbage cans, and let the jar slip from between his fingers. Good-bye, friend, he thought, and slammed the lid down.

  The dogs yelped and strained at their chains upon his approach. Those were real friends. You know who feeds you, he thought affectionately.

  Taurus fought to lick his face when he squatted beside her. He hugged her neck so tightly that she had to lower her back and pull her head down to keep from choking. Her body rippled with power beneath the gold and black coat. She was more vicious since she had tasted blood, but that did not make him love her less. Nor did her dysplasia, especially since her performances requiring intelligence and not just physical prowess equaled or exceeded those of the other dogs--as if she had been created to remind him that a disability cannot defeat a true champion.

  He stroked her head gently. Did he really have the right to subject her, or any of the dogs, to the long voyage and the tropics? Was he placing personal gain before the health of his troops? Madagascar's dampness was bound to affect Taurus' hip joint. Filled with fluid, it was edging from its socket. And what about brain fever? Dogs unaccustomed to tropical sun and humidity were highly susceptible.

  Lantern glow interrupted his solitude. He squared his shoulders and stood up.

  "Redwing," Krayller said. His affenpinscher bared its teeth, as if grinning in recognition of Erich who was its feeder, as he was of all the dogs.

  "Comfort," Erich replied, completing the password exchange.

  Krayller stooped to pat his terrier. "Sir?"

  "Yes?"

  "Will you be taking Grog with you?" The huge man's voice was heavy with emotion. "Rumor has it that I will not be going to Madagascar. Is Grog slated for a new trainer?"

  "Rumors don't run an army. Brains and oil do." Erich looked down at the black monkey terrier. "I'm not positive who is going."

  The trainer drew a distraught breath. Hitler himself had presented the little dog to the corps, a gesture Eva Braun had apparently inspired. At first Krayller had been insulted when Erich put the animal in his charge, but the dog proved quick and intelligent, with a sense of comedy that provided relief from the seriousness of the work with the shepherds.

  "I will leave you now, sir." Krayller swept the light along the line of tethered dogs and began to walk off.

  "Just a moment." Letting go of Taurus, Erich walked toward the far wall.

  "Sir?"

  "When I reach the back fence, let the dogs loose. Pull the pin and let them run with their chains attached."

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "But, sir, the other trainers ar
e asleep or in the city--sir!"

  "Do as I say!"

  Nearing the iron gate, Erich looked up at the sky, studded with stars. Along the horizon of chestnut trees, long feathery clouds shone silver and bright, and he thought of the dogsled that had taken Benyowsky across Siberia. Master of this castle. But who is really master of these grand, graceful animals?

  "I can't do this, sir." Krayller sounded plaintive as a child. "Unless the dogs are muzzled, without their trainers here they will tear each other apart, even if they don't wrap their chains around something and choke to death."

  "You will do as I tell you."

  "If you insist on doing this, sir, I must wash my hands of all responsibility for the consequences."

  "That goes without saying. You are not my keeper."

  On impulse Erich closed his eyes and lifted his arms, as if seeking affirmation from the clouds. Did his destiny, he wondered, like the Count's, lie in Madagascar? He could hear Krayller tinkering with the main pin designed to disconnect all the animals from their runs in case of fire or other emergency.

  That's it, he thought. He would let his real friends decide his destiny. His only friends. Should they obey orders and attack him, he would refuse to take them to the tropics--assuming he lived through the attack--but if they disobeyed an immoral command and bound to their feeder like children to a loving parent, he would set aside his fears for them. For then they would not be Nazi puppets but true German soldiers, capable of thinking for themselves.

  Yes. He willed forth his resolve. Let the dogs decide.

  They came bounding, barking and snarling, tongues and tail wagging with excitement. When they were near enough so that he could see their dark-velvet eyes in the moonlight, he issued an unspoken command:

  Kill me!

  For a moment the dogs kept charging. Then those in front slowed and parted, whining, their ears uplifted, some now looking backward as though listening to a secret signal.

  Kill me! he commanded again as Taurus stormed past the others, no longer fast but her determination undiminished, eyes gleaming with fury. With a primeval rasping deep in her throat, she leaped.

  And, even as he fell beneath her weight, she began to lick him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  He rolled with the dogs, feeling their panting and excitement as his own. When he and they were spent, he lay in the grass and looked at the clouds, physically and emotionally exhausted but happy. He thought about inventing lies for the clouds, images that he could not see but felt a more imaginative man might, then settled for reveling in their ordinariness. Clouds were clouds were clouds. He let his mind roam among them, inventing realities that fit the lies of his life and talking to himself as he so increasingly did. He played out the dialogue in his head, divorcing himself from his own responses as if he were an eavesdropper listening to two people speaking about him.

  He remembered a conversation he had not had with Solomon, but should have. In his head, his friend asked about his relationship with the Party. Solomon had always seemed frightened to mention it, except as vituperative aside, as though sarcasm could safely shield him from his friend Erich Alois' potential enmity. From his quaint little lies, like the Amsterdam fairytale? Quaint little lies in extenuating circumstances, such as Hitler's increasingly obvious intention to rule the world if not the universe, that might make an officer in the Reich abandon a friend who was also a rival?

  So Solomon was careful about asking Erich about the Nazis.

  "My feelings toward Hitler?" Erich imagined himself answering. "They parallel my feelings about my father, who rants when there's an audience, but when it's just the two of us is afraid to lift his voice or his hand. Like the time at Pfaueninsel. There was a crowd around us when Achilles attacked the Reich's precious peacock, but when Hitler whispered to me to shoot her I heard fear in his voice behind that assurance and command. He was afraid of how he would look if I refused. So now I fight him my way, with every step and with every breath. I do it not only because of what he made me do, but also because he is a fool and a coward. A hamster who sells lies instead of other men's half-rotted produce. He has no honor. That's the one thing I cannot abide."

  And so I fight him, but without his knowing. It's dishonorable, I know that, Solomon, but what other avenue...alley, I should say, is open to me, given that kind of opponent?"

  "You're not exactly the rebel type, Erich. Perhaps as a child, but you are fooling no one now, except maybe yourself."

  "I'm a rebel against rebelliousness."

  "And that's how you define Adolf Hitler--as a rebel?"

  "As far as I am concerned, he has rebelled against all that is sacred."

  "So now you claim to fight him. By wearing the uniform. That's hardly what one would call sabotage, or even espionage."

  "When I was taking my Abwehr training at Tegel," Erich said, "there was a retarded boy--a man--whose only job was to clean the blackboards. Every day after classes he arrived with his bucket and rag. Always grinning.

  "One day our instructor was using a projector, and because the classroom was small, he shone the projector against the board instead of a screen. The retarded man arrived early, who knows why. Oblivious to the lesson, he began erasing and washing the board. The instructor was livid, but just stood and watched.

  "The retard reached the place where the picture was projected. A graph regarding troop movements, if I remember correctly. He kept erasing and washing, but naturally nothing came off. I was the first to stop laughing. That's how it is with Herr Hitler and myself. He's going to keep thinking he has all the answers, and I'm going to keep trying to erase the board."

  He realized he was actually talking aloud, as though Solomon were among the clouds. Fitting, he thought. Solomon with his head in the clouds, and me with my mind on theoretical physics, the only subject other than Imperial German history that I enjoyed at the Gymnasium. Well, those times are over now. School's out. For the whole country, it's out.

  Thinking about school, about training, he experienced a pang of anxiety as he realized the dogs were no longer muffed against him. Then, relieved, he saw that they were sitting in a circle half a dozen meters away, perfectly equidistant from him and each other, each in its respective place. A zodiac, with Aquarius at twelve o'clock. He smiled at Taurus seated at five o'clock, her head regally lifted, ears back. He could sense her joy in the pride he felt for the dog team, but for the moment she was too ensconced in her role to acknowledge him as friend. In the affenpinscher's absence, he had become, for her, the center of the pack, the hub of the wheel of the zodiac.

  That was the way they had been trained: the affenpinscher presided; the other dogs obeyed and guarded that central position.

  Unlike with most guard dogs, trained to follow their handler's lead and to move against an enemy in a typical flanking pattern, he had built his corps to respond to one another, and to attack outward from the hub. That would best assure that headquarters remain inviolate, especially, as he hoped, if his main base were behind enemy lines.

  In Madagascar, it occurred to him, he would always be behind enemy lines. All he need do was assume that the Malagasy were the enemy.

  The whole damn island was in France's back pocket, wasn't it? What a prize the island would make if--when--war broke out in Europe, a median in the midst of Indian Ocean shipping lanes! Not that he would give Herr Hitler anything other than a bullet in his heart, but were he, Erich, to control Madagascar, what a hole card he would have.

  He looked at the dogs, sitting like guards before a castle keep, barely blinking, seemingly so patient but, he knew, waiting with high anxiety for an order to begin whatever game he required.

  He mentally reached out to Taurus and felt the effort it took her merely to maintain an uplifted head. Her pain made his eyes water. How could he subject her to the rigors of the rain forest? She and the others were mentally ready--but was she physically capable? Were any of them?

  "Come," he silently commanded Taurus. She glanced a
round at the other dogs as though confused at being singled out to break the formation, and at last left her post. "Come all," he ordered, and the rest followed, beginning with Cancer and continuing around the clock.

  Taurus lifted her head once more. How she loved leading, Erich thought, feeling her happiness.

  At the edge of the cobbled, crescent-shaped driveway the men had set up a dog pull. That Erich had not yet scheduled the event was due less to the dogs' condition than to indecision about how it should occur. Most of the trainers wanted a competition, dog against dog to see which could pull the most weight, while Erich found that motivation misdirected--more appropriate to humans than to animals. Teamwork was difficult enough to perfect among the dogs. Like prima ballerinas forced to become chorines, they held onto their individuality. His focus was on the finer details of unit cooperation. Still, the trainers had a point. If all of the dogs literally pulled together, how, they asked, might they assess the teams' weakest and strongest links?

  The blocks of concrete sat on the sled like a pyramid awaiting ruin beneath wind and rain. It was time to move the thousand-kilo mountain.

  Erich called to Aquarius. He could never feel the other dogs in the team as strongly as he could Taurus. Largest and most powerful of the Zodiac team, Aquarius was slow to respond, eyeing Taurus as if for confirmation or approval. That Taurus was clearly the leader among the shepherds despite her age and infirmities brought a slight smile to Erich's lips, though he tried his best to block the emotion lest Aquarius feel slighted and under or over-perform as a result.

  He hooked Aquarius into the traces and mentally issued the command. Taurus and the other dogs looked on as Aquarius strained. The dog lurched, straining, sliding back against its own efforts, claws scraping on the tarspayed cobbles. On the second try, the mountain of concrete broke loose and began to move. The shepherd kept low, seeming to dig its claws into the tar as the mountain slid forward.