The Devil's Madonna

by Sharon Potts

  The diner only had a few customers. Kali was hit by the smell of coffee and frying oil and felt a moment’s revulsion, but it passed.

  Seth was at a booth in the back, near a window. Kali slid across the sticky red leatherette seat opposite him. There was an untouched cup of coffee by his folded hands, and a napkin holder, sugar packets, and a creamer at the side of the table.

  His white button-down shirt was badly wrinkled and he’d taken off his tie and jacket. He raised his bloodshot eyes to meet hers. “I’m so sorry.”

  She could feel the pain in his voice, but she tried to stay calm. “The best thing is for you to tell me what happened. Start at the beginning.”

  A tired-looking waitress came by and Kali ordered a cup of decaf tea that she probably wouldn’t drink. “Anything else for you?” the waitress asked Seth.

  “No thanks.” His attention was focused on the tabletop jukebox. He began flipping through the song titles.

  Kali took a deep breath, then another. “First of all, tell me. Is anyone injured?”

  He met her eyes, then turned away.

  “Oh, God, Seth. What have you done?”

  He raised his hand. “No. Nothing like that. I haven’t hurt anyone. Not physically, at least.”

  “Then please tell me what’s happened. You’re making me think the worst.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair in two rapid movements. “It’s about me. Something I’ve known, but never wanted to admit.”

  The waitress put a cup of hot water, a spoon, and a teabag down in front of Kali. “Anything else?”

  Kali shook her head and the waitress left.

  “The other night,” Seth said, “when you didn’t come home, I went out.”

  “You said you met Jonathan from work. Was that a lie?”

  “I never lie to you, Kali.”

  The tabletop surface was thousands of tiny dots. From a distance, it looked gray, but up close you could see the dots. Just like Seurat’s pointillism.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Jonathan. Well, he’s smart and funny. He knows how to get me to lighten up when I’m worried about a trial or when the partners are coming down on me.” He started flipping through the song titles again.

  “So? What, then? You called him when I didn’t come home and hoped he’d make you feel better?”

  “Kind of like that.” He stopped on a song. “I figured just a couple of drinks.”

  “And something more happened?” Kali felt a wave of nausea. She’d met Jonathan a couple of times. A red-headed, elfin young man who worked as a paralegal. Cute, fun. Kali liked him.

  “Nothing actually happened. Jonathan said things. And I didn’t want to hear them. I didn’t want to admit I liked hearing them.”

  “But you met him again?” Kali could hear the trembling in her voice. “And then something happened?”

  “Tonight. We went out for a drink after work.” He cleared his throat. “We went back to his place. It was the first time for me.”

  Did he really just say what she thought he said? The dots on the tabletop were blurring.

  “But I realized this was what was missing in my life.”

  Something warm was running down Kali’s cheeks.

  “Please don’t cry. That’s the part I can’t stand. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You don’t want to hurt me?” Her voice was too loud, but she couldn’t turn down the volume. “What about us? What about our baby?”

  “I don’t know what to do. All the rules have changed. But how can I stay with you? I’m gay. I suppose I always knew it on some level, but I didn’t want to accept it.”

  “But we’re married. We’re having a baby.”

  He was crying, as well. “You’re my best friend.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Oh, Kali.” He got up from the bench seat and crossed over to her side, sliding in next to her. He put his arms around her and held her tight. They rested their heads on each other’s shoulders and cried. She could feel his wracking sobs against her chest. Or maybe they were her own.

  “Kali, Kali,” he mumbled over and over.

  She felt hot, numb. She wanted to scream, How could you do this to me? I never want to see you again.

  But there was another voice in her head. Louder. So much louder. It reverberated through her entire body and filled her with panic.

  Mommy, Mommy, don’t leave me.

  No. She couldn’t lose him. She was having a baby. She needed her husband. She needed her family.

  She gently pulled away and wiped her cheeks with a paper napkin, trying to control the shaking all over. “I understand,” she said. “These things can happen. It must have been terrible for you all these years, sensing that something was wrong.”

  He nodded, then reached for a napkin from the aluminum container and blew his nose in it.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m okay with it, really. We’ll just go back to the way things were before.”

  “Oh, Kali.”

  “Please, stop saying that.”

  “We can’t go back. It’s over. I’m not the Seth you married.”

  “I don’t care. We can fix this. We love each other.”

  He shook his head. A smear of clear mucus was on his cheek like an accidental brushstroke of glaze. “It’s not enough.”

  “What? You’re saying we don’t love each other?”

  “Not like a husband and wife should. We love each other like friends.”

  “That is enough. It’s more than most people.”

  “It’s never been right between us, Kali. You know that, don’t you?”

  “You’re my husband. I’m pregnant with your child. With Bucephala.”

  He covered his eyes. “She’ll always be my child, but I just don’t see how you and I can keep living together.”

  “We’ve got to figure it out.”

  He slid away from her, got up from the seat, and crossed back to the other side of the booth.

  “Please, Seth.”

  “We hardly ever touch, Kali. It’s like we’re brother and sister. I understood you had intimacy issues from your grandmother, but I didn’t realize what was going on inside me until tonight.”

  Her stomach was roiling. This couldn’t be happening.

  She felt his hand over hers. He gave it a gentle squeeze against the tabletop. “I do love you, Kali. Even if it’s like I’d love a sister. Whatever else I was feeling, I knew that. I think I believed if you were always keeping an eye on me, I’d be okay. But now—” He shook his head. “I can’t fake it. Even if it hurts you and my parents, I can’t lie about who I am.”

  Something icy and sharp pricked her heart. No. NO. She wasn’t going to let him do this to her. After her mother died, she swore, never again would she allow anyone to hurt her like that.

  Kali took in a shuddering breath and wiped her cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  But Kali no longer felt his pain.

  “Say something, Kali.”

  What was there to say? Thank you for being honest and ruining our lives?

  Truth and lies. Her grandmother had lied and Kali resented that. Now, Seth was telling the truth. It didn’t feel any better.

  “My grandmother’s Jewish.”

  Seth looked back at her, confused.

  “You and your parents were wrong. She’s not a Nazi after all.”

  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “I know.” She felt cold and flat inside. “What does that have to do with anything? Probably nothing. She’s Jewish and you’re gay.”

  Kali slid out of the booth and stood up. “And I’m still me, I guess. Or maybe not.”

  And she left the restaurant without waiting to hear what he was about to say.

  46

  Javier stood in the muggy night air across from the decrepit white house. He had returned to his hiding place in the bushes around nine p.m. He ignored his stiff back
and watched the occasional brightening of the street as a car went by, the winking of the street-lamp when the leaves of a nearby tree shifted in the breeze.

  Kali’s silver Volvo had been parked in the driveway since he’d arrived and several lights were on in the house. He could see silhouettes moving behind lace curtains. The windows in one of the upstairs bedrooms were open. He supposed that was Kali’s room and hoped she would go to the window so he could catch a glimpse of her, but she didn’t. Around ten thirty, someone turned off the lights, leaving the house dark except for the glow of the streetlamp.

  Javier debated his next move. Drop it off now, or wait? Wait, he decided. The later it got, the less likely neighbors would be about.

  He inhaled deeply, longing for a cigarette. He was overwhelmed by the revelations of the day. Since she had come by his office earlier today and disclosed that she was pregnant, everything had become sharply clear. It was as though a bolt of lightning had cracked through to the core of the earth and glowing magma was now rising from beneath to consume all that once was.

  But wasn’t that the way his father had always said it would be? That the world as we know it must be destroyed to make way for the pure?

  Watching her in his office, noting the subtle mannerisms in the flick of her head, the flash of her blue eyes. Picking up cues—more than a coincidence—that she was an artist, just as He had been. Javier had been left with no doubt. She was His true granddaughter. Sacred blood flowed through her veins, pounded in her unborn child’s heart. If only he could harness her power.

  Kali. It was as though she herself had risen from below. It couldn’t have been an accident that her mother had chosen that name. Kali, the four-armed goddess of darkness, energy, and death. Unfortunately, having met the young woman, Javier sensed principled naïveté that would resist his influence, though he desperately hoped to turn those wary blue eyes into trusting ones for him. A shiver passed through him as he thought about her slender neck, the quiver of her mouth. Yes, first he would try to make her understand. Get her to love who she was and what she represented. But if he failed, there was still her child. A child he’d be able to nurture and shape from birth. This time he would prevent the rifts that had torn him from his father and his son.

  His hand tightened around the small box in his pocket. The pain of unabsolved guilt washed over him afresh, no less intense than when it had first hit him over thirty years ago. Too late to right things with his father, Javier had come to the epiphany that changed his life.

  It had been an ordinary, hazy, drunken day. Javier had been at a bar with some college friends having a few beers. They were talking politics and enjoying their congenial bitching about the insipid government. Then the conversation turned to Israel and “The Chosen People.” The easiness evaporated, as least for Javier. He remembered feeling irked. “Chosen People?” Who the hell chose them? And then, one of the guys called some politician a Holocaust denier and cold outrage ran through Javier’s blood. Who the hell were these ignoramuses to pass judgment over things they couldn’t possibly know the truth about? As though erupting from a long dormant volcano, his father’s words came back to him.

  We live in darkness for now, despised by the ignorant masses, who don’t know better. But one day, they will respect and revere us, just as they once did.

  It felt like a pointed log had been rammed through his chest as Javier realized the depth of the damage he had done. He had been no better than these devil-deluded boors, accusing and vilifying his own father.

  Javier had let out a primal battle shriek and heaved the table up on its side. The sound of crashing pitchers and shattering glass filled the room.

  Everyone stared at Javier in stunned silence.

  “What the fuck?” he heard someone say as he left the bar, tears rolling down his cheeks.

  Javier returned to Cincinnati the next day, desperate to find something, some way to make amends for the years he’d let his father down. The lawyer who handled the estate told Javier that his father’s furniture had been sold, or otherwise disposed of, but he gave Javier contact information about a small trunk that had been left in storage for him. So his father had never given up hope on him!

  Javier brought the trunk to his hotel room. With trembling hands, he carefully removed the photos, films, and collection of 78 rpm records. There were the papers, hat, doilies, and locket that had belonged to her. But there was also a book. A first edition of Mein Kampf. Written on the title page was: An meinen treuen Graeber. To my loyal Graeber. It was signed simply, A.H.

  The damp night air clung to Javier’s lungs. The streetlamp cast the shadow of the poinciana tree against the ivy-covered walls of the old house. Javier squeezed the small box in his pocket. Soon, very soon now, it would all come together.

  He knew exactly what the locket would mean to her.

  Around eleven p.m., Javier caught the distant ringing of a phone. The sound seemed to be coming from the room he believed was Kali’s bedroom. He felt a surge of that strange energy again. A few minutes later, the lights in the upstairs room came on, then a minute later, the foyer light. The front door opened. He saw Kali leave the house, lock the door, and run to her car. She pulled the Volvo out of the driveway fast and jerkily, as though in a hurry to get somewhere.

  Javier’s pulse accelerated as he evaluated the situation. Ilse Strauss was alone. For Kali to have left without waiting for someone to come and watch the old woman meant two things. First, whatever had pulled Kali away from the house was some kind of emergency. Second, the granddaughter probably wasn’t expecting to be away for long. That meant Javier didn’t have much time.

  He glanced over at the Rabins’ house, just in case Kali had called her neighbor and he was on his way, but the lights remained off.

  Javier waited a few minutes longer. Then he crossed the street.

  47

  She couldn’t have been dreaming. Lillian hadn’t slept in days. She’d been so worried about everything, how could she possibly sleep? First the doilies appeared out of nowhere. Then her granddaughter got ahold of the old films. And now Kali knew the truth about her Jewish heritage. Everything was coming up like bloated corpses rising to the surface of a lake. So Lillian had no time for sleeping.

  And yet, she kept seeing the past. Reliving the pain of every moment.

  Harry’s room at the Somerville Hotel was cold, and Ilse kept her hands in the pockets of her cloth coat as she paced in front of the window. The sky had turned a slushy gray. Harry had been gone for hours. Could something have happened to him? What if Graeber had followed him? Or what if Graeber was here at the hotel, waiting for her?

  Harry had warned her not to leave the room, but where was he?

  She looked out at the ruins of a medieval fort in St. Aubin’s Bay, able to make out the silhouettes and twinkling lights of the low houses in the jutting peninsula of St. Helier. It was low tide and the fishing boats lay in the dark sand like beached whales.

  Ilse rubbed her abdomen and thought about her doctor visit this morning. A beached whale. Stranded, gasping for breath. Would she ever reach water again?

  A key turned in the lock. Ilse brought her hand to her mouth, stifling a cry.

  Harry opened the door, crinkling his brow beneath his wool cap. “I’ve startled you. I’m so sorry.”

  He closed and locked the door behind him. “Damn, it’s cold in here. Let me turn up the heat.” He fiddled with the knob on the radiator and the smell of burnt dust filled the room. “That’s better.” He pulled the drapes closed, turned on a lamp, then came toward her with a brown paper bag. “I’ve brought you some food.”

  “I can’t eat.” She pushed the bag aside. “Tell me. Any news about my parents?”

  “Please, Astrid.” He paused and shook his head. “Ilse.” He’d been using her real name since she’d told him the truth. “You must eat something. For the baby’s sake.”

  “I’m not—”

  He held the bag out toward her. “Please, Ilse.
Sit down and eat, and I’ll tell you what I’ve found out.”

  She took a pastry from the bag and stuffed it into her mouth as she perched on the edge of the bed. “Tell me,” she said, her words muffled.

  “First, there’s no question we have to get out of here before he finds you. I’ve made arrangements. The Normandie is leaving from Southampton the day after tomorrow. There’s a cabin reserved for us. I’ve been assured that your new identification papers will be ready by then. You will become Lillian Breitling with a British passport. My international banking contacts are fortunately well connected. And you won’t have to worry. Anyone tracking Astrid Troppe or Ilse Strauss will lose the trail.”

  “But what about my parents? I can’t leave until I know they’re safe.”

  He sat down beside her on the bed, opened his overcoat, then loosened the plaid muffler around his neck. He stared at the faded carpet.

  She grabbed his arm. “Have you found out something about them?”

  He ran his tongue over his lips. “There’s nothing you can do for them here, Ilse.”

  “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

  “They’re being held in a camp.”

  “I know; I told you that. They were picked up on November 9th and taken to some place called Dachau. But many of the Jews who were taken away that night have been released.”

  He shook his head. “It’s different for your parents. They’re being held as political prisoners in connection with your brother, Joseph, who’s a known agitator.”

  “No. That’s wrong. They were picked up because they’re Jews. Because of me.”

  She began to sob. Harry held her against him and patted her back. His overcoat smelled like cigar smoke and damp wool. “I’ll take you away from here. We’ll figure it out in the States.”

  “Don’t you see?” Her voice quivered. “It’s all because of me. Kristallnacht, the destruction of the synagogues and Jewish shops, the roundup of the Jews. My parents.”

  “No, silly girl.” He stroked her hair. “You had nothing to do with that. Some young, crazed Jewish boy shot a German diplomat. That’s what triggered Kristallnacht. Nothing you did.”