The Trial of Fallen Angels

by James Kimmel, Jr.

  He permitted himself only two days to bury Helmut and grieve. Then he returned to Poland with the explanation that the war effort there had intensified despite our having conquered the country years earlier. “The Third Reich urgently requires the expert services of Jos. A. Rabun & Sons to assist in various matters of national security that cannot be discussed,” he said. Papa had stopped smiling after his first trip to Poland. His eyes had turned darker and narrower, as if he were being haunted by someone or something.

  In the half century since Großvater Rabun opened the doors of his small masonry shop near Kamenz, Jos. A. Rabun & Sons had swelled into the mighty Körperschaft that trenched modern Dresden’s sewers, paved its streets, and erected its buildings. Our little family business became the premier civil-engineering and construction firm in all of Saxony province, providing for our needs very well. Because of this, its demands were never resented by the family. We had far more than most—ample food, beautiful clothes, sufficient funds with which to enjoy dining out, the opera, and even wartime travel abroad. We lived comfortably on my grandfather’s estate with its large chalet-style house, riding stables, and gardens reflecting his love of the Alps. Other, less fortunate citizens of Deutschland had sacrificed so much more.

  After Papa left for Poland, I met my best friend, Katerine Schrieberg, at our secret place on the estate—a hollow in the woods surrounded by a dense grove of pine trees and guarded by a thicket of briars and vines. She was nervous and pale as always, her fingers incessantly rubbing all the blessings that could possibly be extracted from the golden cross I had given her to present if she was ever stopped by the Nazis in the woods. I could see that my failure to appear during our last three scheduled meetings had made her very concerned. When I told her the sad news about Helmut, she cried as if it had been one of her own brothers, so much so that I found myself comforting her instead of she comforting me. Of course, she was fond of Helmut and felt sorry for me. But she wept also for herself and her family—for if the mighty Rabuns of Kamenz were no longer safe, where did that leave the weakened Schriebergs of Dresden? She asked if I would come back with her to her house, and I eagerly accepted the invitation, welcoming the opportunity to escape, for even a moment, the pall that had descended onto my life with the Allies’ five-hundred-pound bomb.

  The house in which the Schriebergs lived was not really a house at all. It was an abandoned hunting cabin built by my grandfather deep in the immense tract of forest that stretches from Kamenz all the way to the Czech border. Before taking up residence there, the Schriebergs lived in a beautiful townhouse in the finest section of Dresden and owned several theaters, two of which, in fact, had been constructed by Jos. A. Rabun & Sons. Katerine and I were very close. We had taken dance and violin lessons together since grade school, and her parents and mine held seats on the boards of many of the same civic and charitable organizations until the Nazis banned Jews from such positions.

  But then, in 1942, the Schriebergs abruptly booked passage to Denmark after accepting the then generous but nevertheless insulting offer to sell their theaters, home, and belongings to my uncle Otto for 35,000 Reichsmarks in total, rather than allow the government to seize the properties for nothing. They had family in Denmark who had agreed to house them, but when news spread of Nazis rounding up fleeing Jews at the train stations and loading them onto boxcars headed for Poland, they changed their plans and decided to take their chances by staying and hiding. Katerine made contact with me and asked about the hunting cabin.

  She and I had sometimes slept in the cabin on warm summer nights and talked about the boys we would marry. It had not been used by my family since the start of the war, so I agreed to allow the family to stay there, and soon began these discreet visits to our meeting place with baskets and sometimes small wagons loaded with food and supplies, always honoring their constant pleas not to tell anyone of their existence—not my mother, not Helmut, and most important, not my father or Uncle Otto. No one.

  Katerine’s father, Jared Schrieberg, and her younger brothers, Seth and Jacob, were industrious and immediately set to excavating a tunnel beneath the cabin through which to escape if anyone should approach. She told me they practiced their flight twice daily regardless of the weather and could silently vanish beneath the carefully reinstalled floorboards within thirty seconds exactly. They came and left from this tunnel, did most of their cooking at night to avoid attracting attention to the smoke from their fires, and relieved themselves far away from the cabin to avoid even the scent of habitation. It was a miserable and demeaning existence. I felt sorry for them, but their precautions proved unnecessary. The very boldness of hiding on the property of an officer of the Waffen-SS (the organization into which my uncle Otto accepted a commission) made life there secure for them in the way that life for certain tropical fish is made safe by living among lethal sea anemone.

  When Katerine told her parents the news about Helmut, tears filled their eyes and they said they would sit shivah for him, which they explained to me was the Jewish mourning ritual. In my youth and ignorance, I panicked. I did not want them confusing God with their Jewish prayers into mistakenly sending Helmut to the Jews’ heaven. As politely as I could, I begged them not to do this. When they insisted, I grew furious. I had helped them at great personal risk and would not tolerate their interference in such matters. My grief for my brother and my hatred of his unseen murderers found an outlet in the Schriebergs, and I yelled at them in a voice more than loud enough to remind them upon whom they depended for their survival: “Sagen Sie nicht jüdische Gebete für meinen Bruder!”

  The room fell silent. Katerine stared down at the floor, biting her lip as Frau Schrieberg dug her fingernails into Katerine’s arm. Seth and Jacob looked to their father in horror, expecting him to punish my impertinence as he had so often done to them. But Herr Schrieberg only smiled coldly at me, revealing a flash of gold through his graying beard and mustache, unwittingly contorting his long, bulbous nose into the very caricature of a Jew mocked regularly in German newspapers of the day. As if surrendering a concealed weapon, he cautiously pulled the black yarmulke from the balding crown of his head and placed its flaccid shape before me on the battered plank table that served the family as dining area, desk, and altar. The Schriebergs would not offer prayers for my brother’s soul. I glared back at the old man and thanked him with a healthy dose of teenage impudence, having for the first time cowed an adult. He had no option. I left without another word and ran quickly through the woods, regretting my resort to such tactics but intoxicated by exerting my will so forcefully and effectively against my elders. The Schriebergs’ submission to my demands made me feel powerful and, for a moment, in control of the uncontrollable world around me. At least I didn’t have to live like them, like animals.

  —

  THE SKIN HAS miraculously knitted itself over the amputation and the bandages have been removed, but even so, I refuse to touch or even look at the stump of my right arm. It terrifies me. Dr. Farris, the psychologist assigned to all amputees at Children’s Hospital, assures me this is perfectly normal.

  “I’ve counseled many children in your situation, Brek,” he says. “Victims of firecrackers, car accidents, farm kids like you too. Most react the same way. They think that what remains of their arms and legs are monsters poised to take what’s left of their bodies, but you must remember that this is the same arm you were born with. It’s been terribly injured and it needs your love and compassion. You’re all it’s got. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try, but it isn’t fair,” I cry.

  Dr. Farris looks at his watch. “Oops, time’s up for today. I’ll see you next week, okay? I think you’re doing great.”

  I find my mother reading a fashion magazine in the waiting room.

  “Done?” she asks.

  “Yep.”

  Luas is standing in the hallway outside Dr. Farris’s office. My mother doesn’t see him. He smiles and extends his left hand without first extending his
right, pulling me with the gesture back into Nana’s living room in Shemaya.

  “Thank God you’re back,” Luas says. “Sophia and I were beginning to wonder whether you would ever return.”

  I look around the room, dazed and confused by the flood of images, emotions, and personalities rushing through me. Nana brings me a cup of tea, and I sit down on the sofa.

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Ms. Rabun,” Luas says. “She led an interesting life.”

  I slide my hand into the right sleeve of my bathrobe and trace the familiar contours of my arm: the shrunken, atrophied bundle of biceps; the rough, calcified tip of humerus jutting like coral beneath a puffy layer of flesh capping the bone.

  “Yes, yes she did,” I say.

  “The Schriebergs lied, you know,” Luas says.

  “About what?”

  “They sat shivah for Helmut.”

  17

  Separating myself from Amina Rabun was one of the most difficult things I’d ever done in my life—or death. Amina Rabun’s story became my story. Unfortunately, as with many plays, her story was a tragedy.

  On the rainy afternoon of 23 April 1945, a Soviet scouting patrol advancing south toward Prague stumbled upon the Rabuns of Kamenz. It was the day of Amina Rabun’s eighteenth-birthday celebration.

  The Allies held Leipzig to the west and the Russians were massed along the Oder to the east, making the defeat of Germany inescapable. Amina’s father, Friedrich, and her uncle Otto had already pulled back to Berlin with the retreating remnants of Hitler’s forces. They advised their families against leaving Kamenz, however, reasoning that the Russians were interested only in Berlin, that the Americans would soon take Dresden, and that the armed forces of the latter were preferred to the former with respect to treatment of civilians. Privately, the Rabun brothers were also concerned for their affairs and property, which almost certainly would be looted if abandoned—if not by enemy soldiers then by their own German neighbors who had suffered such privation during Hitler’s desperate last stand.

  Unaware of the approaching Russian forces, Amina rose early that day to begin baking for the party, but not before Großvater Hetzel, who had risen even earlier to slaughter a pig to roast in a pit dug several paces from the long garage full of polished Daimler automobiles resting on thick wooden blocks because there was no fuel to run them. By noon, the sweet scent of pork, yams, cabbage, and fresh Kuchen teased everybody, especially Aunt Helena’s four hungry children, two boys and two girls, who had been playing hide-and-seek all morning despite a soft rain and their mother’s unwillingness, in anticipation of the feast, to prepare their usual hearty breakfasts.

  Sensitive to the effect displays of prosperity could have during such lean times, only family members had been invited to the party, all of whom, save those living in the manor itself, conveyed their regrets due to lack of transportation to the country. It was thus agreed that leftovers would be delivered to the hungriest of Kamenz by anonymous donation to the cathedral. Amina also planned secretly to smuggle a portion to the Schriebergs, who had enjoyed very little meat recently and, having long ago relinquished observance of kosher laws in their cabin, would happily accept scraps of pork.

  All went merrily and well into the early afternoon, with everything and everyone cooperating except the weather. But even the rain that had been falling since morning was kind enough to resist becoming a downpour until just after Großvater Hetzel removed the pig from its pyre. Children and adults raced inside as much to stay dry as to enjoy the feast. They assembled in the formal dining room around a large table upon which had been arranged the finest place settings and two large hand-painted porcelain vases overflowing with bouquets of wildflowers freshly picked from the surrounding gardens. In the background, a phonograph whispered Kreisler and Bach into the air. Colorfully wrapped gifts were arranged near the seat of honor at the head of the table, including several packages for the birthday girl delivered by special SS courier from Berlin.

  The anticipation continued to build until finally, with considerable ceremony, the grinning pig atop a tremendous silver platter made its debut to ravenous applause. The browned head and body of the beast remained intact, resting peacefully in a soft bed of garnishes as if it had fallen asleep there. Before carving into the meat, toasts of precisely aged Johannisberg Riesling were made first to the beautiful young Amina, then to the cooks of the feast, and finally to the safe return of Friedrich and Uncle Otto and a swift end to the war. Amid the happy conversation, laughter, and music, the revelers could not hear the Soviet scouting patrol approaching. They had no opportunity to defend themselves or flee.

  The soldiers swiftly entered from three sides of the manor and herded everybody outside into the rain. After conducting a quick search to ensure they had everyone, they segregated Herr Hetzel and the young boys, ages six and twelve, from the group. Without warning or hesitation they shot them all on the spot before they could offer protest or prayer, as if this was simply a matter of routine for which the soldiers assumed everyone had been rehearsed. Amina’s mother and aunt were shot next while running to their aid. Left standing, like statuary in a graveyard, were Amina Rabun and her stunned cousins, Bette and Barratte, ages eight and ten. The three girls’ features were petrified into rigid sculptures of terror, waiting for the next bursts of gunfire that would join them with their fallen family members. The girls were spared such a fate, however.

  Two gunshots were heard unexpectedly from the woods behind the house, from the direction where the Schriebergs lived in the cabin. The soldiers dropped to the ground and returned a fearsome barrage with their automatic weapons. Amina and her cousins stood motionless in the crossfire, afraid even to breathe. Then everything became silent. In the distance across the field, in the direction from which the two shots had been fired, Amina saw what appeared to be an American soldier holding his hands over his head as if he were surrendering. The Soviet commander directed two of his men to approach the soldier while the rest of the platoon held its position. Several minutes passed. Finally, Amina heard some Russian words shouted back from the woods and the commander gestured for his men to get up. After several more minutes, the two Russian soldiers returned, one of them carrying a simple double-barrel shotgun, the kind Amina had seen her father pack on hunting trips.

  Laughing at the weakness of this threat, the soldiers presented their trophy to their commander. Soon the rest of the platoon joined in the laughter and cheering. But amid the backslapping and congratulations, as if the same idea had struck each of them at the same time, attentions were turned slowly toward Amina, Barratte, and Bette, who still had not moved.

  The men looked hungrily from the girls to their commander and back to the girls. They began to cheer louder and louder, insisting that their request be granted. Amina could tell instantly what they wanted. The commander looked at the girls and then back at his men and shook his head in mocking disapproval. The cheering became even more frantic. Finally, like Pontius Pilate, the commander turned his back on the girls and wiped his hands. Amina, Barratte, and Bette were dragged into separate bedrooms of the manor and beaten and raped repeatedly throughout the night.

  At dawn, the commander of the unit ordered his men to move on.

  Amina staggered from the room in which she had been held captive, in search of her cousins. She found the older, Barratte, dazed, bruised, and bleeding but, thankfully, still alive. She already knew that the younger, Bette, was dead. When the drunken and gorged Russians had permitted Amina to use the toilet late during the night, she slipped briefly into Bette’s room and found her naked body cold and blue, her face broken and bloodied almost beyond recognition because she would not obey their orders in Russian to stop crying. Even after that, Amina had heard men with Bette at least three times.

  —

  I CRIED SO long for Amina Rabun and her family. I cried for her more than I had cried even for myself after I lost my arm. I lived each horrifying moment with her. I believed I would
die in the agony of the soul of Amina Rabun, if dying from death were possible.

  I spent long periods alone on Nana’s front porch, mourning, convalescing, trying to make sense of what Amina Rabun had experienced during her life, and what I had experienced during my own. I searched for meaning within the endlessly conflicting seasons of Shemaya that struggled with one another for space in the cramped sky, like quadruplets in a womb. An entire year of days condensed into a single, dazzling moment of nature in rebellion against time. The apple tree I’d climbed as a child extended its limbs through all four seasons at once: some branches in blossom, some leafy, others tipped with ripe green apples, others in autumn and winter bare, like an unfinished painting. Always changing yet always the same. Endlessly, like human generations. Do trees mourn the loss of their springtime buds, or do they look forward to their arrival?

  One day, Nana joined me on the porch. “You told me I had to discover why I was introduced to Amina Rabun, Toby Bowles, and Tim Shelly,” I said.

  “Yes,” Nana replied. “Did you?”

  “Katerine Schrieberg, Amina’s best friend, became Bo’s mother, my mother-in-law,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Amina saved Katerine from the Nazis. Without Amina, Bo would never have existed, I would never have known him, and Sarah would never have been born.”

  Nana nodded.

  “Toby Bowles saved Katerine from the Russians. Without him, Bo would never have existed, I would never have known him, and Sarah would never have been born.”

  Nana nodded again.

  “But I convinced Katerine to sue Amina and Barratte to recover her inheritance.”

  “Yes, you did,” Nana said.

  “I had no idea that Amina and Barratte had been raped by the soldiers or that the soldiers had murdered her family.”

  “No,” Nana said. “You didn’t know.”