THE MADNESS LOCKER

by EDDIE RUSSELL

  “How are they feeding and housing so many people?” Brigitte piped up from her corner, less concerned, but more curious.

  “Brigitte, we don’t need to know that.” Marlis, said sternly, reprimanding her daughter for even raising the subject.

  In a quavering tone, Herman asked his son, “What would they do to us? I mean, if they knew that you have told us?”

  Friedrich looked around at his family with great concern. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I mean, I told you because I think that I am going to end up at the Eastern Front, which means there is a good probability that I will either be seriously wounded or worse. I don’t think that they are going to send me to serve in the camps. I am not considered elite enough for such duty.”

  “If you are not supposed to know, then why did Ulrich give you that information?” Herman, sitting close to the edge of the couch, holding his wife’s hand, asked nervously.

  “I think he made a mistake. He assumed all SS personnel were in the know, so to speak. But after he told me and a number of other personnel he was called into the station and I could see the Standartenführer reprimanding him.”

  “So you are in danger. More than we are,” Brigitte offered openly. Seeing her parents’ blank stares, she continued. “I mean, nobody knows that you’ve told us anything. But from what you say, they know that you know.”

  “That is correct. Which is why I am certain that I will be assigned to serve in Guderian’s army in one of the Panzer divisions.”

  “What makes you think that you will be severely wounded or die?” Brigitte was now leading the conversation.

  “Let’s just say that the Eastern Front is not a good assignment with a safe chance of return. Given how the war on...” He stopped, considering the implication of what he was about to say. “It’s just not a good assignment.”

  “Can you ask for a reassignment?”

  “Not within the division that I am in.”

  “Why can’t they just leave you where you are at present? What exactly do you know?” Marlis re-joined the conversation.

  Friedrich thought for a minute before replying. “Well, the redeployment is going to happen. That’s why Ulrich and others are in Berlin. They are rotating personnel. The assignment that I currently have, transport, is considered a rather cushy one compared to the combat units and Waffen SS that are deployed on the Eastern Front.” Counting the points on his fingers, he proceeded to explain. “So I am going to be reassigned. The camps are out. I am not in that elite group, so to speak. That leaves a bureaucratic assignment or active duty. Given that my Standartenführer thinks that I am a lazy softie, and now he suspects that I know more than I should, I don’t think he is going to think twice about sending me on an assignment where I have a less-than-thirty-per-cent chance of returning alive.” With that he unfurled his middle and index fingers and raised them in a V-sign, having answered both questions.

  “Can you go off to Holland?” Brigitte sniggered, remembering that at one time Friedrich had lived with a student from Utrecht.

  “What do you mean, desert?”

  “Sort of. Resign your commission and become a civilian.”

  “Sounds nice. If my chances of surviving the reassignment are thirty per cent, abandoning my unit and running off to Utrecht is desertion. The penalty is quick and simple: death by firing squad.”

  “Well, it was just an idea.”

  “Brigitte, maybe you should forget about your good ideas.” Once again Marlis reprimanded her daughter.

  With that the room fell into a heavy silence, each pondering their own fate, having become privy to information whose outward exposure jeopardised their relative safety. Moreover, the more immediate threat to their family unit - Friedrich’s precarious fate in light of his imminent, and likely, redeployment to a dangerous duty - weighed on their minds.

  Suddenly Herman perked up. “Assuming that what you are saying is true, and that Ulrich is now considered part of some inner circle, why can’t we use that connection to help you?”

  “And say what?”

  “Well, that he should encourage them to either keep you in Berlin, where you are now, or reassign you to an office job.”

  Friedrich paused to ponder the possibility. “Well, rumour - everything is rumour - is that Ulrich somehow has a tenuous connection to Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner. I don’t know what the connection is. But it would explain his rapid promotion.”

  “What is his rank?” Brigitte was curious, trying to recall the rather shy and plain-looking boy from down the road.

  “ Sturmbannführer.”

  “Which is what?” Marlis shot back. “We don’t know what these ranks mean.”

  “Well, he is just two ranks lower than my superior, who is in charge of the entire contingent of three hundred men at the train station.”

  “It sounds like he could be helpful,” Herman proffered with dim hope in his voice.

  “If he wants to be. But if the rumour about his connection to Kaltenbrunner is false, my superior could easily countermand any favour, and I’d end up, well, I’d end up where I’d probably end up, only quicker.”

  After some more discussion, they all agreed that it was the only viable option. It bore some risks, to be sure, but just the same, they outweighed the obvious dangers of doing nothing and facing the inevitable: Friedrich risking his life. With that resolution some of the earlier dread and doom lifted from the room and they all returned outside to continue their earlier convivial conversation.

  Late in the evening, the family accompanied Friedrich to the train station, ending his brief furlough. They all hugged him warmly, each in turn looking at him intently as if trying to preserve his image in their mind, thinking privately that this might be the last time they would see him. Just as he was about to board the train, Brigitte came up close to him one final time and handed him a wallet-sized photograph that she had taken of them on his last visit when he received his SS commission at Grünewald. “Just in case... so you don’t forget us.”

  At 7.42 precisely the train departed from Bremen Station back to its destination in Berlin. Friedrich leaned out through the carriage window and waved goodbye to his parents and sister, his face engulfed in the rising steam of the locomotive hurtling deep into the night.

  A night that, in Berlin, was no longer quiet and dark as in the distance of Bremen. The nightly Allied bombing raids had begun and the city was aglow with fires from the many burning buildings. Air-raid sirens clamoured continually, accompanied by the sirens from ambulances and fire trucks.

  Given this new reality, the prospect of staying in Berlin in a relatively safe bureaucratic position became, though still not as perilous as redeployment to the Eastern Front, a far less certain future than escaping to Utrecht. Added to the fact that Friedrich had neglected to tell his family that his redeployment papers had already been served; they were tucked firmly in his breast pocket next to the photo. Any discussion of countermanding that order was in effect for their benefit only, to allay their fears. The short furlough, with a week gone, had been granted on the premise that on his return he would be heading eastwards from Berlin, making the furlough his farewell.

  BELLEVUE HILL,

  EASTERN SUBURBS, SYDNEY

  WINTER 1986

  Ruth was back to setting the dinner table on Friday night. Since Ernie’s death, she had abandoned the ritual, other than lighting the Friday-night candles. On the Friday following his death, she lit the candles absent the perfunctory blessings, and proceeded to dine on a meal prepared for two. Emotionally he was still there; his death had not quite escaped the confines of his life. But as the days passed and his ethereal presence evaporated, it was harder and harder to hold on to routines that had once served two people and now fitted poorly on one.

  It was really just the mundane sort of things that annoyed and saddened her the most. Like walking into their favourite restaurant, a place they had frequented once a month, and where she was now welcomed with the
greeting, “Eating by yourself?” It wasn’t like they meant to rub it in. They were just making a polite enquiry so that they could direct her to the appropriate table. But that was just it; the appropriate table meant being shunted off to a desolate corner, wedged in between the toilet and the kitchen.

  On her next visit she bluntly instructed the greeter to sit her at a more jovial table than the one reserved for singles ostracised by the death of their partner. When he stood confused, she bypassed him and walked straight up to the owner and asked for her and Ernie’s table. Without hesitation he ushered her to their usual table with a warm smile, pulling out the chair and welcoming her back.

  Then there were the movies. One ticket. Sitting solitarily with the other solos during the matinee sessions. Here no one said anything because they were all in the same boat. Rarely did she see any couples come in for the afternoon matinee session in the few times she attended. She could easily invite one of her many female friends along. But it didn’t feel the same. It was the earlier dilemma of giving in and giving up. Hard to do when you have spent every waking moment for the last forty years inseparable from someone who is no longer here.

  Gradually she began to modify her routines. Instead of going to their favourite restaurant, she went to a café where she nearly always found someone she knew and joined their table. Instead of going to see movies, she joined a group of women her age that subscribed collectively to a season of plays and concerts. This way, she was no longer going out alone.

  And now, well, she was beginning to think that maybe there was room in her home for someone else. A person who, only a week ago, she had contemplated turning in for crimes unknown. But perhaps, she reasoned, it was time to turn many pages at once. Let the past go. Otherwise it threatened to drag her into a well from which there was no egress; a life lived in darkness and alone.

  As far as Sam was concerned, or whatever his real name and identity was, well, if he was an ex-Nazi, not all Nazis were bad; there were good Nazis, incongruous as that sounded. Germans who, due to fear, cooperated openly with the regime but secretly found ways to commit acts of bravery in spite of everything. Maybe Sam was one of those. Anyway, she was too old to engage in any witch-hunt. Ironically, for with time both Ernie and she had become inflexible and unforgiving in many ways, yet a change of circumstances such as she had been thrust into forced her to become more tolerant. Perhaps she could be the other side of the coin: the Jewish person to forgive the ex-Nazi who was looking for a way to rehabilitate and restore his life.

  What was it that he said: you are not the only one that cannot sleep? Well, welcome to the club. A great many elderly Jewish people suffer from nightmares, more so later in life as they recall the horrors of the Holocaust.

  Finally she settled on the comforting excuse that ‘You only live once’, and that if Ernie had befriended Sam, he couldn’t be all that bad. This was reinforced by the fact that he had appeared at her doorstep at a crucial moment in time. So she decided to make room for Sam in her life and her home. Tonight she invited him to join her. She could be mischievous and ask him to recite the Friday-night prayers and follow with the blessing of the wine and the slicing of the bread. But that would be a cruel joke. Instead she would pray over the candles, the wine and the bread and then call him over. That way he need not be faced with the embarrassment of what to say and do.

  No sooner had she rested the phone than he appeared at the door, propping it gently with a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers. An expensive spray of flowers, too. Yet, she thought with an inward smile, it is seldom that one brings flowers to a Friday-night dinner. He was treating this as a date. To her this was a customary meal on the eve of the Sabbath. Traditional, but not festive.

  True, Sam’s faux pas was not quite in as bad a form, she had to admit, as when two non-Jewish acquaintances from her bridge class that she invited years ago to a Passover dinner appeared with a plastic container from the local Greek takeout. Ruth graciously took the container, and once the guests were comfortably ensconced in the living room, adroitly placed it outside the door for next door’s dog to feast on.

  She and Ernie had often joked about the aftermath. Ruth had forgotten that she had placed the takeout outside the door, and one acquaintance noticed it on the way out and commented sourly to Ernie, who unhesitatingly explained that it wasn’t for the dog, but Elijah: the mystery guest who is supposed to appear on this holiest of nights. Since then they had both referred to the dog as Elijah, much to the disdain of Mrs Fleischmann, the neighbour on the other side of Sam, who thought it in very poor taste to name a dog after a biblical figure.

  Now as Ruth was preparing to bring the food out, Sam skilfully opened the wine and poured two full glasses. Ruth, spying him from through the serving hatch, thought, as she had the other afternoon, that he was behaving as a teenager might on his first date. She began to wonder whether he had always had a crush on her. Was he perhaps thinking that he would get her drunk and then make a move? Well, what if he did? Maybe a bit soon, she contemplated, but not an unpleasant thought. She tried to recall the last time she had felt physically attractive or attracted to anyone. Much as she loved Ernie, their life did not revolve around romance but had become a relationship of comfort. They were comfortable for each other. Like the slippers or the housecoat, or the very many routines they had become accustomed to.

  This was something new, something fresh and perhaps a little exciting. How would it feel?

  “Ruth?” Sam alerted her from the dining room. Forgetting the dinner and her guest, she had become lost in all the many ramifications that this date presented. He had just come for a Friday-night dinner and she was already entertaining a clear path all the way down to romance and the awkwardness that a new relationship entails, age notwithstanding. Maybe he was right to feel like a teenager on a first date. The heart is impervious to age.

  “I am sorry; I was momentarily reminded... never mind.” Carrying the first dish across, she set it down in the middle of the table and went back into the kitchen. Noticing her awkwardness, Sam got up and followed her.

  “Listen. If this is too soon, I can always leave and come back at another time,” he offered unconvincingly.

  Seeing him standing in the kitchen doorway, apprehensive of her nervousness, she shrugged him off with, “Don’t be silly. I didn’t go to all this trouble so that you could run off. Take this and go back to the table. While you are there, why don’t you pick something you like to listen to?”

  His face, which seconds earlier had sagged in the apprehension that she would respond in the affirmative and ask him to leave, now brightened and he eagerly grabbed the bowl and made his way back to the dining room.

  Ruth waited a moment longer in the kitchen to see what music he would put on. Dave Brubeck. Of course. Soft and mellow jazz. Mood-setting. Sam was quite adept at this.

  Finally they were both seated and starting to enjoy the meal.

  “My compliments. When did you have the time to prepare all this?”

  “That’s all I have. Time. And plenty of it.” Ruth set her fork down and looked across at Sam. “What do you do with your time?”

  “Well, once I wake up, I prepare my own breakfast, then I go down to the shops, have my morning walk. I sit in the café, read the paper. Three days a week I play bridge. Two days I volunteer at the gallery. Time passes.”

  “Yes, it does. It’s over two months since Ernie died. I can hardly believe it. I had these plans to box up all his clothing and give it to the local charity. Repaint the house...” She paused, feeling lost for a moment in recalling the minutiae involved in the aftermath of the death of someone close.

  “So, what happened? It sounds like a good plan.”

  “What happened? What happened was I started to feel lonely. Which makes you depressed and not want to do anything. You just sit there watching the time pass, eventually wondering if there is any point to your life.” She half expected Sam to lean over and place his hand over hers. Part of t
he plan, she thought cynically: the flowers, the wine, the soft jazz and now the comforting hand. To her surprise, he didn’t.

  “I had a different experience, you know, when Emma passed away. Being alone again, away from her love, allowed all the ghosts of the past to come back and haunt me; night after night.” He looked directly at Ruth to see if she was comprehending his agony. “I no longer had her protection. Love, it protects you. I don’t mean that first romance, but the bond between two people that care deeply for each other.”

  Ruth was surprised to see tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. Now she felt moved to reach across and put a comforting hand on his. The good Jew on the other side of the coin. Instinctively she did.

  He momentarily broke from his anguish and pulled his hand away, resuming his meal in silence.

  “What, Sam? What exactly are they haunting you about?” Her tone softer, seeking to break through gently, unlike the other time when she had probed for the sake of exposing him. This time she was looking to expunge the ghosts by exposing them.

  “I don’t wish to talk about it. Not now. It is a nice evening. Two friends having a wonderful meal together. I don’t want to ruin the mood.”

  At least he left the door open, she thought to herself. “Would you like some more of the vegetables?” A mundane question to break the pall that had descended over the table.

  “Oh, no. It’s all wonderful. But I am getting very full and I would like to leave some room for dessert.”

  She laughed.

  “Oh, I am sorry. I did not mean to suggest...” He reddened instantly. “There is no dessert. That’s all right.”

  “Sam. There is plenty of dessert: strudel, chocolates, fruit. Whatever you like.” With that she began to clear the table.