Prague Counterpoint (Zion Covenant)

by Bodie Thoene

  Murphy could see her now through the glass partition of Strickland’s office. She was the center of attention among a half dozen newsmen in the tiny cubicle. At almost the same moment Murphy spotted her, she looked up and noticed him as well. Her lips parted in a broad smile of genuine relief. “Johnny Murphy!” she mouthed through the glass. The heads of the other reporters swiveled to look. Hands raised in greeting as Amanda flung open the glass door and shouted his name. “Johnny! You made it!” She gave him a quick hug, then wrinkled her nose. “Darling, you look simply dreadful!”

  “Hi, Amanda.” He smiled sheepishly. “You look great as usual. What I wouldn’t give for a hot shower and a full night’s sleep!” The only consolation was that, with the exception of Amanda, everyone else looked and smelled as bad as he did.

  “Hi, Murph.” Scat Freeman lifted his chin in acknowledgment.

  “How ya doin’, Murph?” Tom Phelps nodded grimly. “What’s the word on Johnson and Timmons?”

  Phelps had been a regular poker player in Murphy’s room at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin. He had beaten young Timmons at the game so often that Timmons was usually broke. “Last I saw––” Murphy took an empty seat next to the window––“they were teaching a couple of Wehrmacht guys how to play five-card draw.”

  “The kid’s okay, then?” Phelps was genuinely concerned.

  “Timmons? I don‘t think they’ll arrest him for winning.”

  “Good.” Phelps cleared his throat. “He owes me money. Hope he beats the pants of those little . . . ” He glanced toward Amanda and checked his flow of language.

  “Nazis,” Amanda finished for him.

  “Yeah,” added Scat. “Somebody’s gonna have to beat them at their own game, or we’re all in trouble.”

  Murphy glanced around the small room at the familiar faces of his comrades. There was not a man among them who had not spent time in Vienna with the news service. Their sense of outrage matched his own. “Now we can tell the world ‘I told you so,’” Murphy said.

  Amanda raised an eyebrow skeptically. “And they will say, ‘So?’”

  Strickland closed the door behind them, shutting out the clatter of typewriters. “Not if we play this right.” He sat down behind his scarred desk and studied his notepad. “Bill Morrow is going to interview you clowns. CBS and the BBC are teaming up for this one. Provided the atmosphere and the sun spots don’t foul up the transmission, we ought to crackle over the American airwaves about suppertime.”

  Strickland tapped his pencil on the notepad. “The idea is to make every man, woman, and child drop the fork and let the beans get cold when we start talking.” He paused and let that goal sink in. “They’re going to hear your experience firsthand. Out of your mouth to their ears. This has never been done before, and it’s gotta be good.” He looked over his glasses at Murphy. “Okay, Murph, what have you got to make America lose its appetite?”

  Murphy closed his eyes and pressed his fingers on the bridge of his nose as he tried to capture the strongest impressions of yesterday’s horrors. The vision that came to him was not that of Schuschnigg giving his final farewell to the Austrian people. It was not the Nazi flags unfurling from every public building or the armbands on the young students who manned the barricades. He sighed heavily and did not reply.

  “Well?” Strickland asked impatiently.

  The tragic melody of Elisa’s farewell to Vienna played through Murphy’s thoughts. Theo, broken and half frozen on the street, then jammed into the trunk of a car as he was forced to flee from yet another country. But he could not mention that in a broadcast that was to be heard on both sides of the Atlantic.

  “All right, Johnny?” Amanda put a sympathetic hand on his arm.

  He opened his eyes. “Sorry.” He shrugged. “There’s so much. How much time are we going to have?”

  “Two minutes each.”

  “Two––” How could he tell the story in two minutes?

  “This is radio, Murphy.” Strickland sat back. “Just give us enough copy to read in two minutes. A couple paragraphs. An Austrian obituary.” Strickland flipped a page of his notes and scanned the sheet. “For instance,” he continued, “Bill Jordan is going to link up with us from Paris. He’s going to tell about people fighting to get on the last plane out. Clawing to get a place on the plane. It was so full it barely got off the runway. One woman made it, but her husband was left behind. You know, that sort of thing. A real grabber.”

  “Sure,” Murphy agreed quietly. It was more than just a story to him. “In Germany, the death of reason came gradually.” He looked out the window as he spoke. “Like throwing a frog into cool water and then heating it up a little at a time. You know?” He was speaking to himself. “The frog will just get used to the heat until the water finally boils. That’s what happened in Germany. Everyone sort of got used to it. A law here, a law there. A neighbor disappears, and you hope it isn’t you.”

  Strickland cleared his throat. “Amanda is doing the German side of the story.”

  Murphy looked back at the group. They were staring at him. Maybe wondering if he was losing his mind. Just talk, Murphy, he told himself. Tell them what you saw! “The Nazis were already thick at the border by the time we got there. Men and women were being searched and arrested. Hardly anyone was allowed through. I saw a family––” He swallowed hard. “Husband. Wife. Young child. Jewish, I guess. Everybody Jewish wanted out of Austria.” He shrugged. “They beat up the man, and right there, in front of him and the kid, they strip-searched the woman.”

  “You mean right at the checkpoint?” a voice echoed hollowly. “Stripped her?”

  Murphy looked at Amanda. Her warm brown eyes were filled with emotion. She knew it was true—and that this one violent act marked the death of all that was decent and civilized in Austria. An entire nation had been thrown alive into a boiling cauldron of hatred. There was no time to become accustomed to brutality. It had simply come upon them—an inferno whose heat would suck the pure oxygen of freedom from their lungs until Austria lay in the dust, morally seared and scarred like Germany.

  “You know, of course”—Amanda’s crisp British accent was tinged with anger—“that the ministry of propaganda in Germany is saying that there were riots in Vienna. That the Germans were asked to come in and restore order. That Goebbels . . . !” She swore and then glanced at Phelps, who added a few choice words to her comments.

  Strickland almost smiled. “Can’t say that on the airwaves. Censors would pull the plug after ten seconds. But we ought to make every husband in America look at his wife as though she were the woman stripped in public at the border. Right, Murph?”

  Murphy rubbed his hand across the sandpaper stubble on his chin. He just wanted to be done. Just wanted to sleep and dream about tall green grass in the fields of Pennsylvania. He wanted to think about his own mother and younger sister safe in the kitchen, making Sunday supper for the pastor and his brood of kids. Pump organ. Singing in the parlor. Laughter and talk about crops and livestock as the sun slips away. Somewhere in the world things were peaceful and right! Now he was about to bring the image of the unthinkable into the homes of America.

  “It’s still Sunday, isn’t it?” he asked. “Is it still Sunday back home?” He could picture the big Philco radio across from his mother’s plump blue sofa. His family would hear his voice. He would tell them the story of the young woman’s humiliation as she was stripped beneath the glaring lights of the Nazi checkpoint. He would make them hear the anguish of the husband’s helpless cries. He would tell it all as though the wife had been his own . . . Elisa?

  “Yes,” Strickland said patiently, “it’s Sunday at home.”

  “Sunday!” Amanda said brightly. “We can teach everyone a new hymn? Have you heard the little tune Noel Coward came out with?” She hummed a few bars, then launched into the lyrics:

  “Let’s be sweet to them

  And day by day repeat to them

  That sterilization simply isn’t done.
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  Let’s help the dirty swine again

  To occupy the Rhine again,

  But don’t let’s be beastly to the Hun.”

  Whistles and cheers erupted from the group and Amanda bowed slightly, pretending to doff an imaginary hat.

  “A little music with the news, huh?” Strickland grimaced. “I’m afraid the folks back home don’t want to hear about the sterilization aspect of the Nazi policy. Nor abortions. Nor the mercy killings of the aged. You and Murphy tried that story line, remember? Let’s stick to the events in Austria.”

  Amanda pretended to be insulted. “But, Larry, darling, those are the events in Austria! Today the Nazis march in; tomorrow they begin their little programs! I’m giving you tomorrow’s news today!”

  Murphy frowned, certain that what she said was true. All that had come upon the church in Germany would now smash into the churches of Austria. The changes that had broken down the sanctity of the family within the Reich would certainly begin their erosion there as well!

  ***

  Hours later Elisa once again entered the suburbs of Prague. The running boards of the little Packard were nearly scraping the pavement with the weight it carried. The make of the automobile was concealed by the luggage and bodies of a dozen more intrepid passengers who clung to their baggage and to one another during the tedious journey. Haggard men and women sat on the roof of the car. Elisa had only enough room to see the road past the six refugees who perched precariously on the hood.

  With each passing mile, their dazed expressions softened with relief. They were the lucky ones. They were out of harm’s way. It was better not to think of those who had not been so lucky. None of these refugees would go beyond Prague into the Sudetenland, the area of Czechoslovakia populated by those of German racial descent. Like a stubborn weed, the roots of Nazi doctrine had gone deep into the hearts of many in that territory, blossoming into sporadic displays of violence under the firm guidance of men like Hans Frank and Albert Sporer. No one doubted that their support came directly from Adolf Hitler himself.

  Outside the borders of the Sudeten territory, the country was a haven for refugees from Germany. It was, as Theo had told Elisa, “another Switzerland. Democratic and free.” The city of Prague was not cursed with the disease of anti-Semitism that now erupted in Austria and had already begun to spread through Poland. For a thousand years the Jews of Prague had lived in relative harmony with the Czechs. Theo had often said he believed that another thousand years would still find both races living and working side by side beneath the hundred spires.

  Elisa pulled to the side of the street that emptied into Wenceslas Square. Beyond she could see the huge bronze of good King Wenceslas overlooking the city. Her passengers slid off the car and thanked her. Piles of baggage were heaped on the sidewalk beside them. No one seemed to know where they should go now. Elisa did not offer to take them farther. She could not even think for herself what she should do next.

  Across the square she caught sight of the telegraph office. Unlike the other storefronts that were closed tight for Sunday, the telegraph office was open and crowded with people. Was it possible that telegrams were still being sent to Austria? There was no other explanation.

  Elisa joined the long line waiting at the polished marble counter. Extra clerks had been brought in to take messages from worried friends and relatives. The wires could not be sent directly to Austria, but were relayed first to Italy and then sent into the new occupied German territory.

  All the while a radio blared from the shelf behind the counter. The roar of the exultant mob in Vienna filled the packed room:

  “The wonderful scene you hear is taking place in front of the Imperial Hotel on the famous Ringstrasse in Vienna. . . .”

  Elisa froze, rooted where she stood as she listened to the broadcast. The Imperial Hotel was just a short walk from the Musikverein. She passed it every day. As the telegraph key tapped out the fears of the men and women in the cramped room, she closed her eyes and pictured herself beneath the third floor balcony where Hitler stood before the cheering mob.

  “The chancellor, Adolf Hitler, just appeared on the balcony of the Imperial Hotel a few seconds ago and was acclaimed again and again by the multitude. . . .”

  “Fraülein, please,” a small bookish-looking man nudged her slightly. She had not moved forward with the line.

  She nodded distractedly and stared down at the message she had scrawled. She must be careful what words she sent to Vienna now. The Gestapo would most certainly be in charge of the telegraph offices. The thought made her shudder. As much as she wanted to, she could not send a wire to Leah. A brief explanation of her absence to the orchestra manager was all that would be safe.

  vienna philharmonic: Stuck in Prague till things quiet stop Tried crossing to get back to Vienna but was turned away stop Will return to work as soon as possible stop elisa

  This much would have to do. Her job with the orchestra was secure as long as she was not branded a fugitive by the Gestapo. The Nazi authorities must not be allowed to assume that she had fled Vienna. At least such a message would verify that she had attempted to get back, that she had no reason to fear the new regime.

  As the growling voice of the Führer filled the Ringstrasse and laid to rest any final illusions about his purpose, Elisa paid for her telegram and pocketed a copy of it to show members of the Gestapo in Vienna who might question her absence from the joyous event. “I would have loved to play,” she would tell them. “It was impossible, you see.” Then she would pass the carbon, dated and signed, to them. “Tried crossing to get back to Vienna. Turned away.” And then she could add, “But I did get to hear the Führer’s speech over the radio.”

  The angry and scornful speech crackled like fire:

  “A Legitimist leader once described the task of Austria’s so-called independence as that of hindering the construction of a really great German Reich. I now proclaim for this land its new mission!”

  New cheering erupted from the Führer’s audience.

  “The oldest eastern province of the German people shall be from now on the youngest bulwark of the German nation!”

  Still more cheering interrupted the speech. Elisa knew that such words could not be uttered in the Ringstrasse unless everyone in leadership who opposed them was now muzzled. She realized she had to control her emotion. Even here in Prague there might be observers of Himmler’s Gestapo. She must not allow her own sickening sense of dread to show.

  Hitler continued:

  “I can in this hour report before history the conclusion of the greatest aim in my life: the entry of my homeland into the German Reich!”

  Now the tumult grew so loud that even the voice of the commentator was drowned out. Surely if Leah and Shimon are still in Vienna, they can hear the roar, thought Elisa. Like the clanging bells of St. Stephan’s, no one in the city could hide from such a sound. Elisa stood in the center of the crowded room and listened in silence. She pressed her hand to her forehead with the unshakable conviction that she must get back immediately when the frontier opened for travel. Until that was a possibility, she would try to make contact with the men and women here in Prague who were also links in the long chain of smuggled passports for German-Jewish children.

  Elisa had no names and no real clues as to where she might find her comrades. Leah had told her that no one in the ring had more than the most superficial information about the others. It was better that way. The sort of persuasion used by the Gestapo could crack even the strongest person, after all. Elisa herself was only a tiny fragment of a network that stretched from Germany across Europe and on to faraway Palestine. She was simply a courier, expendable by the network if she was caught and arrested in Germany. She knew no one but Leah and Shimon and the old instrument repairman in Munich. She knew none of her Prague connections by name or by sight. Now she felt totally cut off. The Gestapo could torture her as they had tortured Rudy Dorbransky, and she still could not tell them anything of importance. T
his fact was no doubt a comfort to the refugee network, but it was also the most frustrating sort of agony for Elisa.

  “Fraülein?” A gentle hand touched her shoulder. “Are you ill?”

  Elisa opened her eyes and smiled weakly. “No,” she replied, her reverie broken by curious glances around her. “Just picturing the scene.” She looked toward the rumbling radio, then hurried out of the telegraph office as though she were being pursued by the events in Vienna.

  10

  Sanctuary

  A powerful wave of movement engulfed Louis and Charles. The suitcase, so carefully and lovingly packed this morning, was dropped and lost to them as they clung desperately to each other. Charles thrust his arm through the leather suspenders of his brother’s lederhosen. The adults who towered around them did not seem to notice the two small boys as they fought to breathe and struggled to stay on their feet lest they fall and be trampled.