Prague Counterpoint

by Bodie Thoene

  “Mademoiselle!” He bowed again and led her to a small table near the pastry carts. She did not look at him as he placed a menu in front of her. Her eyes remained riveted to the entrance of the restaurant. Thomas will come! He will help us!

  ***

  Throughout the long night, Le Morthomme labored to decipher the code locked within the pages of the book Elisa had brought. The bright light of the desk lamp strained his eyes as he found one letter at a time and wrote the German word to be translated first to French and then into English.

  There was danger here for young von Kleistmann. The Dead Man had gotten that far. For weeks he had suspected as much, watching the tall German officer as he strode away from the bookstall. Yes, Thomas von Kleistmann’s life was worth little tonight. Le Morthomme’s suspicions had been right. Thomas had been followed. He had been marked for assassination.

  But there was also much more here. Thomas was a small, almost insignificant piece of the puzzle. Something . . . something!

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sipped the tea his wife brought him. No doubt he would be at this process all night. Thomas was not to be the only victim, and the end of all of it was to be the end of nations and peoples.

  The Dead Man felt justified in having sent the lovely young courier away without forged papers. As each new word was revealed to him, he felt certain that the fate of two small boys was a matter of little importance compared to what he now extracted from the pages letter by letter.

  ***

  Traffic slowed to a crawl as the clock tower of the Gare de Lyon came into view.

  Thomas leaned forward, straining to see beneath the arch where travelers passed in and out of the station. Is that Elisa there among them? waiting for me?

  “Do you know,” he asked the driver, “when the Orient Express leaves?”

  The driver cleared his throat and stuck out his lower lip as he peered out the window at the face of the clock. “If you wish to catch the Express, monsieur, you will not make it in time. Not with traffic as it is.”

  Thomas did not answer. Already he had his wallet in his hands. He tore a handful of bills out and threw them onto the front seat. He didn’t know how much—it did not matter. He jumped from the taxi as the astonished driver shouted his thanks. Horns blared as Thomas dodged through the creeping automobiles.

  “Crazy man! You want to be killed?”

  The sidewalk cafés on both sides of the street leading to the station were packed with after-theatre crowds. Thomas did not take his eyes from the clock face as he ran through the throngs of people. Women gaped and men shouted angrily as he slammed through them. Elisa is in the Gare de Lyon. Elisa, in Paris! Nothing else mattered. He did not see the startled faces or hear the shouts. The hands of the giant clock above the station moved, and Thomas ran harder. She was there, somewhere beneath the gilded dome of the vast station.

  The lights of a thousand cars threatened him as he stepped from the curb. Was he being followed? At this moment it did not matter. Elisa’s train was leaving. He must stop her, keep her here in Paris. The rest did not matter. The world did not matter. Canaris and Oster. England. The Reich might tumble into hell, but Elisa was here in Paris looking for him!

  The hands of the clock clicked forward. . . .

  ***

  Elisa stood on tiptoes on the platform beside the waiting train. She searched the teeming throngs in the great echoing hall and beyond. Thomas was not coming.

  “All aboard! Last call!” the conductor shouted. The other passengers were in place in their compartments. The Express would not wait. The conductor touched her elbow. “He is not coming, madame,” he said sympathetically. The French were always sympathetic in matters of the heart. “Stopped by the theatre traffic, no doubt.” He guided her to the open door of the compartment. She stepped up and took a seat among four other travelers.

  Through the window Elisa scanned the heads of the crowd in the lobby. She would spot Thomas easily; if he was there, she would see him. The conductor was right, although he had mistaken her anxiety for love.

  The envelope with the photographs of the children had grown damp from the perspiration of her hands. Thomas was not coming. He could not help her. He would have, she believed, if only she could have seen him and looked into his eyes. He would have helped her for the sake of love.

  She closed her eyes, feeling very much alone. She had promised the children: “If only you will be patient a little while longer . . .” Now she must return to Vienna without travel documents for them.

  ***

  Thomas slammed into a porter, knocking luggage everywhere. Angry curses followed him as he passed beneath the arches of the station.

  Across the enormous hall, the whistle of the Express shrieked its warning.

  “Elisa!” Thomas shouted, but his voice was lost to the shrill cry of the train whistle. All along the crowded platform friends and lovers stepped back as the compartment doors slammed shut in obedience to the authority of the timetable. Conversations continued through open windows. Words of farewell and final embraces took on a tearful urgency.

  Thomas ran harder across the marble floors, dodging around the mob that blocked him from her. He searched the open windows of the compartments. “Elisa!”

  She was there; he saw her profile, eyes cast downward. “Look up! I am here!” Still only halfway across the hall, he shouted her name again as the shrill whistle sounded one last time. Why does she not look up?

  The conductor signaled. Passengers leaned out the windows for one last touch, and fingertips reached up from the platform. Once more the whistle sounded as Thomas reached the edge of the platform a dozen cars behind Elisa’s. “Elisa!” he cried again. But the train slowly glided away to slip into the night.

  ***

  Herschel Grynspan took a certain pride in his work for Le Morthomme. The old man at first had allowed him to work only as a porter for customers too weak or weary to carry away their purchases. But now the bookseller was teaching Herschel something about the books he carried. Occasionally he was given the duty of tending the tables where the less valuable books were stacked. After a short time listening to the banter of Le Morthomme, Herschel was able to talk a bit about bindings and value himself.

  “You are just a parrot.” The Dead Man laughed, but Herschel could sense a certain pride in the old man’s voice.

  Every morning Herschel stacked a few francs beside his uncle’s breakfast plate before he slipped out into the still-dark streets of Paris. He wrote his parents of his work and saved his extra cash for them, hoping to find a way to help them as they struggled to survive the boycotts against Jews in Berlin.

  Twice Le Morthomme had saved Herschel from deportation when he had been asked to show his work permit. “He works for me,” the Dead Man had explained. “I permit him to work for me.” A few francs had exchanged hands, and perhaps a valuable volume had been tucked into the pocket of the French inspector. “You are a strong boy,” the Dead Man explained to Herschel. “My customers like you. Even the Nazis like you.”

  “They don’t know that I am Jewish.”

  “And are you fool enough to tell them?” The Dead Man smiled.

  Customers might have liked Herschel, but there were some for whom he had no affection. Germans came in every size and variety. Many were refugees like he was, but many others were German officials who were stationed in Paris, or perhaps passing through the city just long enough to visit the cabarets and pick up illegal books at the famous book market.

  The regular customers seemed preoccupied and often arrogant, Herschel thought. There was one in particular who seemed never to notice Herschel, although Herschel recognized him almost immediately.

  Even in Berlin, when he had worked with his father at Lindheim’s Department Store, Herschel had hated the self-assured young Wehrmacht officer who had stolen Elisa’s heart so completely. Theo Lindheim had brought the man into the alterations department and had introduced him as “a member of
the family.” Thomas von Kleistmann had stood in stony silence during his fittings. It was quite obvious that the man felt himself above all Jews, whether they were only tailors or men like Herr Lindheim himself. In the end this proud, strutting Aryan had even placed himself above Elisa. Everyone knew it. Everyone but Elisa had known that von Kleistmann was a spiritual son of Hitler.

  Often von Kleistmann came into the bookstall of Le Morthomme, and when he came, Herschel turned away and silently hated him for what he was and what he had been in Berlin. He was head and shoulders taller than Herschel, handsome and strong and everything that reminded Herschel of the terror of Germany. Sometimes he wondered if the German officer could sense the hatred that radiated from Herschel’s body. But von Kleistmann seemed oblivious to everything but the books Le Morthomme chose for him to purchase and read. Had he ever seen Herschel in Berlin? Or had he always looked over the top of the young man’s head as he did now?

  Only Le Morthomme noticef the seething flush on Herschel’s cheeks time after time. At last he asked the young man, “What has this German ever done to you?”

  “He is an anti-Semite.” Herschel did not look up from the stacks.

  “So? Are you advertising that you’re a Jew today? Has he kicked your teeth in?”

  “Not him—men like him. They attacked my father in Berlin last year. Beasts like this man let the Gestapo drag away innocent––”

  “He is a good-paying customer.”

  “He doesn’t pay enough. I would like to make him pay!”

  “He has never even spoken to you.”

  “Nor would he if he noticed me.”

  Le Morthomme smiled. “I have a package for him. You must carry it to the German Embassy for me.”

  “The embassy?”

  “He works there.”

  “I cannot go to that place! I am a Jew!”

  “You are in France. Here you work for the Dead Man. Everyone who knows me—and that is everyone—leaves my help alone. So, take this package to the German Embassy. Ask for Thomas von Kleistmann. You speak good German. My other boys speak only French and English. You must go quickly for me, Herschel, or I will lose a customer.”

  ***

  Like a bell, the alarm sounded inside Herschel’s mind at the words of Le Morthomme. Yes! The old man will still lose a customer, he thought as he ran quickly to his garret room. Had there been some divine instruction in the way Le Morthomme had expressed himself?

  Herschel charged up the leaning stairs and flung open the door of the hot, stuffy room. He pulled back the mattress, revealing the precious gun he had kept just for this moment. Here was his opportunity! What did it matter if he was a few days early? The German would die just the same! The statement of Herschel’s grief and frustration would be made!

  He held the weapon gently in his hand. “For the sake of Zion I will kill those who kill my people.” He was practicing the statement he would give when the bulbs of press cameras popped and reporters shouted their questions: “Why? Why did you kill Thomas von Kleistmann? Tell us your political motivation for such a deed!”

  Herschel slipped the gun into his pocket. He would answer them all. His shot would be a reply to every Nazi boot that had smashed the face of a German Jew!

  “They will hear me,” he vowed as he retraced his steps, descending to the subway that would take him to the front entrance of the German Embassy. Only when he stood before the wrought-iron arch, stammering that he was a delivery boy for Le Morthomme, did he notice that he was trembling. Fear gripped him. The power of the swastika seemed to tear through him like a saw blade, slicing into his courage. He looked at the checkerboard tiles on the floor of the foyer and slipped his hand into his coat. The gun he felt there was now his only hope.

  41

  Vitorio’s Revenge

  Le Morthomme had meant for his gift of Liberty Magazine to frighten Elisa with the certain knowledge that little Charles and Louis Kronenberger would never be allowed to pass alive beyond the borders of the Reich.

  As the train moved slowly up the mountain passes toward the border of Austria, Elisa reread the story Murphy had written. She was proud of his words; his final statement of truth found its way deeply into her heart. Far from making her afraid, the story renewed her determination that something must be done. She was returning to Vienna without the precious papers she had counted on; there should have been no glimmer of hope left in her. But then she read Murphy’s words once again:

  It began as only a crack in the fortress of Right. Men looked away as other men decided who was worthy of bearing children. They looked away as the state decided first which child was worthy of life, and then who among the elderly was still fit to live and consume the food of the nation. From there it was merely a small step to deciding that those with a deformity must not live. Those who were mentally ill were raked into the ash heap as well. Then the small crack widened into a great chasm as the state declared that those of a certain racial heritage, religion, political persuasion, skin color, eye color, and on and on, were not worthy to live among the great Germanic “Christian” race.

  In the end, even the One who said, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me” has been driven from the great churches of Germany. Jesus Christ, Himself a Jew, has been hounded from His rightful place. Cathedrals have torn the cross from their altars. The Bible now is openly burned in bonfires that celebrate the return of the German pantheon of pagan gods. Mein Kampf is declared the holiest book of all generations.

  Christ, who healed the sick and embraced the weak of His society is crucified daily because of His command to love. In Germany today, the strong are praised and extolled, and the weak are despised and rejected.

  The Nazi Reich, which began as one small crack in the fortress, is now a yawning gulf into which the innocent, like Jesus Christ before them, are being flung. The back of the true Church has been broken. It is not enough any longer for one man or even a dozen to protest the wholesale slaughter of the infants yet in the womb. Their voices are lost forever in the prisons that now hold more true believers than the empty churches.

  It is too late for them. Too late for Walter Kronenberger and his wife and sons. As a reporter who has watched the walls between right and wrong crumble more every day, I am certain that those who cried out a warning did so too timidly, and too late.

  As I return to my homeland, I see the same horrible signs beginning here. I tremble for my own country. For the children. For the church. For the simple men and women who wish only to live in freedom.

  Permitting the state to decide who is “worthy” of life opens the floodgates of destruction. A government that permits, encourages, and ultimately requires the death of those deemed “unfit” will find it easier to eliminate other “undesirables” as well. And who is to say what physical, racial, mental, or religious attributes may one day determine “worthiness”?

  God alone has the right to decide the worth of human life. I pray that it is not too late for us already!

  Again and again Elisa read over the words until their meaning in English became clear in her mind. All this time she had not thought that John Murphy was anything more than a newsman! She had never guessed that beyond his easygoing exterior he had the depth to grasp the entire tragedy so completely.

  Elisa looked out over the snowcapped peaks of the mountains where the warmth of the winds had begun to thaw the ice. She smiled as she considered how her own icy perceptions about Murphy had begun to thaw. She certainly had not known what she was doing, but somehow she had married a man who prayed with his pen, just as she prayed with her violin!

  If ever she saw him again, she decided now, she would look him in the eye and tell him that she had read his heart in his words, that his words had given her courage.

  Yes, it was too late for Walter Kronenberger, she thought. But maybe there was still hope for his sons!

  ***

  Murphy had a story to write. A deadline to meet. But it wasn’t getting done. One line follo
wed another, stopping midway through as the typewriter carriage clanged. Then the image of Elisa came to him so strong that he had to close his eyes and catch his breath before he tried again.

  He could not understand why her face and the gentleness of her voice became so clear at that moment. It irritated him that the thought of her smile and the sweetness of her skin intruded on his concentration. He had important stuff to do. The whole world was teetering on the edge of disaster, and all Murphy could think about was a woman!

  He tore the page out of the carriage and inserted another clean sheet to try once more.

  This morning Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain publicly denied British responsibility in the matter of . . . Murphy stopped again, his index fingers poised over the keys of the typewriter. He closed his eyes to shut out Elisa, but she was still there before him, more vivid than ever. Murphy ripped the page out and crumpled it into an untidy ball, then flung it angrily to the floor.