The Devil's Madonna

by Sharon Potts

  It was Leli herself.

  Perhaps if she had said nothing, things would have worked out differently.

  But she hadn’t remained silent.

  He pounded into her, tearing her open with explosive jabs, hurting her like she’d never thought possible. “Stop,” Leli cried and turned to see his contorted face whipping up and down, a lock of dark hair against his forehead, sweat running down his cheeks into his moustache, his gray beard hanging loose from one side of his face.

  Her scream caused him to stop abruptly. He pulled out of her, a stunned expression on his face. He touched his cheek. The fake goatee came off in his hand.

  He looked at the beard, then at her with those blue, blue eyes. His lips twitched upward in a small smile. “So now you know, my Leli. I was planning to tell you soon, but now is as good a time as any.”

  He took a step toward her, his shirt open, pants down around his ankles. His penis hardened.

  She squeezed back into the sofa, wanting to vomit. The studio was cold and the outside wind pounded against the windows.

  “Don’t be frightened, Liebchen. I am still the same man who loves you. Better than Professor Altwulf, though I suppose there’s no need for him any longer.”

  He pressed the palms of his hands against the back of the sofa and leaned in to kiss her. His breath smelled foul and in the dimness, his eyes were the color of blue mold. “Don’t worry, Leli. No harm will ever come to you.”

  She spit in his face.

  He drew his head back and wiped the spittle away. “What’s the matter with you?” His voice had become sharp. “Do you know how many women would give their lives for the opportunity to be fucked by me, even once?” Then his expression softened. “Don’t you know what you mean to me? You’re my beautiful Madonna. The only woman I’ve ever truly loved.”

  He reached out to touch her cheek and she smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me, you disgusting murderer.”

  His chest expanded as his penis drooped.

  “You’re a disgusting, perverted murderer.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “I’ve heard what you’ve done. Kidnapping innocent people, murdering them.”

  “Innocent people? You mean the traitors and Jews?” He raised his voice. “And what should I do with them? Jews are the protuberant tumors in our society. They must be excised before they infest the rest of us through their leprous souls.”

  “Our leprous souls? Then I pray to God I’ve infected you with mine.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re no Jew.”

  Leli covered her mouth. What had she done?

  He leaned toward her, breathing too hard. Some of her spittle hung from his moustache. She felt his fingers close over her hair. He lifted her up off the sofa and flung her across the floor. She hit hard, her face banging into the leg of an end table. The room spun around her.

  “Get out. Get out of my sight.”

  She reached for the table, pulling herself up. Her slip was torn and sticky against her raw skin.

  “Get out, you Jewish whore.” He kicked her and she went sprawling over the carpet, toward the door. Her chin was throbbing and something warm was running down her neck. It turned the lace on her slip red.

  She grabbed her coat and purse from the chair, and crawled to the door.

  He was screaming obscenities, smashing liquor bottles and glasses, knocking over lamps, the easel, his paintings along the wall.

  She reached for the doorknob, pulling herself up. She got the door open, eased herself outside, her coat and purse clenched in her hand.

  Almost safe, she thought as she pulled the door closed after her, but his words escaped, echoing in the narrow hallway.

  “I’ll get you, Jew. You and all the rest of your filthy kind. I swear I’ll eradicate all of you from this earth.”

  Lillian held the painting tightly. November 7, 1938. She had escaped that night, leaving Berlin on the next train out.

  Lillian closed her eyes in pain.

  And when millions of Jews were killed in the ensuing years of the Holocaust, only Lillian knew the truth. Adolf Hitler had fulfilled his threat.

  And it was all because of her.

  59

  Kali drove with no idea where she was going. It was raining and the windshield was blurred. The raindrops were warm and running down her cheeks. She touched her face. Not raindrops. Tears.

  A dark shadow pulled in front of her. Kali swerved. Honking all around her.

  Kali’s heart pounded through her chest.

  She slowed the car, put on her right blinker, and pulled over to the side of the road. What was she doing? Trying to kill herself? Kill her baby?

  She put her head back against the seat as she caught her breath. She needed to get herself together. This was her baby inside her. Hers. She wasn’t going to put it in danger.

  Headlights from oncoming cars streamed by to her left. She was on the strip of parkland called Haulover Beach. To her right were palm trees and a deserted parking lot. Beyond, moonlight played on the breaking waves in the ocean. No people. Kali got out of the car. The air was briny and a breeze whipped through her hair. She leaned against a palm tree for support.

  Adolf Hitler was her real grandfather.

  She said it aloud over the sound of traffic and crashing waves. “Adolf Hitler is my grandfather. My grandfather was a monster.”

  Her knees went weak and she dropped to the ground. “Noooooo. Noooooo.”

  There was a pain in her abdomen, like her guts were being wrung out. She retched into the sparse grass and rocky dirt.

  She tried to spit out the vile taste in her mouth, but it stuck to her tongue.

  Hitler was her grandfather.

  Suddenly, everything that had happened these last few days made sense to her. Her grandmother’s guilt and fear that someone was stalking her, even Lillian’s reference to considering an abortion many years ago. Of course, she had considered it. She’d been carrying Hitler’s spawn.

  And so was Kali. She touched her belly. Hitler’s great-grandchild was growing within her womb.

  She heard a car pull off the road onto the gravel a distance behind her. A car door slammed. Someone was walking toward her. A large man in dark clothes.

  Had he followed her here? Lillian had said someone was after the painting and Kali, and Kali had assumed it had been paranoia, but that was before she knew the truth. Was it possible the man Lillian spoke about—this Graeber—was still alive? That he would want to destroy all evidence of Hitler’s Jewish offspring?

  The gravel crunched beneath the man’s shoes.

  Kali got up and ran toward her car.

  The man called after her, “Hey, don’t run away.”

  Kali climbed into her car, slamming the door after her.

  She turned on the ignition and pulled into traffic, almost colliding with a speeding car in the right lane.

  The scream of the other car’s horn echoed in her head as she straightened her car and continued into traffic, her heart pounding. She glanced in her rearview mirror. The man was watching her, rubbing his head. He was wearing a police uniform.

  Kali drove with heightened awareness, keeping to the speed limit, both hands clutching the wheel, conscious of the baby inside her. She checked the rearview mirror periodically, but realized the man Lillian feared couldn’t possibly still be alive. Her grandmother was reacting to years of pent-up guilt and fear. Kali and her baby weren’t in danger. No one knew their terrible secret.

  No one but Kali and her grandmother.

  A few minutes later, Kali pulled into a parking spot near her studio. The street was quiet. No cars driving by, no pedestrians. Kali got out her keys. The New Age store was dark. It was almost nine and Camilla usually closed up around seven.

  Kali went inside, locking the door behind her and leaving the light off. She found her way past the shelves of candles, inhaling the scent of incense and vanilla as the wind chimes tinkled from the movement in
the air.

  Once through the drape that blocked off her studio, Kali turned on the overhead light. The brightness stung her eyes as it bounced off the pale wood floors and mirrored wall.

  She sat down on the floor, folding her legs beneath her and began to cry. It was too much to hold inside, but whom could she tell? Seth used to be her best friend, her confidant, and their baby’s father. But he was also a Jew. He would never accept that his child had Hitler’s blood. He might even demand that Kali have an abortion.

  She touched her abdomen. She would never do that. Never.

  What about Neil? He seemed to know her better than she knew herself. He could be fair and objective.

  She thought about lying in his arms a few hours earlier, their bodies entwined. He said he loved her. But their relationship was so new, did she really want to burden it with this awful secret?

  Maybe she should just keep it to herself. Tell no one. Why not just go on as though nothing had changed?

  Kali got up from the floor and went to the mirror. She touched her face as she studied her image. Except for the bluish shadows that had darkened and spread beneath her eyes, she still looked like Kali. She still was Kali. No one had to know the truth.

  After all, she didn’t have the impulse to kill, control, or destroy. She didn’t hate anyone or any group of people.

  But how could she come from this monster genetically and not share some of his traits?

  She inhaled, bringing the smell of oil paint and turpentine deep into her lungs. In the mirror, she could see the reflections of several canvases on the floor, the sketches and watercolors on the table, the large painting on her easel.

  Four-armed monsters and floating cherubim.

  Just like his.

  “Noooo,” she cried as she ran to the table. “I’m not like you.” She grabbed the watercolors and charcoal sketches, tearing them in half, then in half again. Turning them into tiny pieces of heads and bodies and arms. Terrible, terrible arms.

  “I hate you,” she screamed as she ripped. “I hate you.”

  She rushed to the oil paintings, digging at them with her short fingernails, but the canvases couldn’t be torn. She pounded on them with her fist, spit on them. “I hate you.”

  She took the scissors off her desk and cut through the canvases. Cut off the arms, cut through the heads, shredded the rest.

  She pulled the painting off the easel. Her masterpiece. She stabbed it with the scissors, penetrating the fairy’s blue eyes. Then again, cutting through the cherub’s undeveloped torso. And again, slashing through the outstretched arms. Again and again and again.

  “I’m not like you. Not like you.”

  Then she sank down to the floor, put her cheek against the cool wood, and curled up with her arms around her abdomen. Her child.

  Not his.

  60

  Lillian was dreaming about her mother singing to her. She opened her eyes, feeling a joy she hadn’t known in years, thinking about her mother’s sweet smile. Just like in the locket. She finally had photos of dear Mama and Papa, photos she’d longed for for seventy years.

  She reached into the pocket of her floral housecoat and took out the gold heart. She would have worn it around her neck, but the chain was broken. Graeber had broken it the day he brought her the radio. She’d meant to have it fixed, but had never gotten around to it. And then she had to leave without it.

  Graeber must have rifled her room after she left Berlin. He would have found her mother’s letter, then taken the doilies and the locket.

  Lillian felt a shrill fear, the joy gone.

  And now Graeber was returning them. Letting her know at any moment he could come for her. For the painting.

  For Kali.

  Lillian slipped the locket back in her pocket and looked around her bedroom with a start. Where was Kali? Then she remembered. Kali running down the stairs, horrified by the truth. The front door slamming. She had left before Lillian had a chance to explain who Graeber was. How he followed her to Jersey. But Lillian had escaped with Harry and a new identity on the Normandie. And Graeber had lost track of her. At least he had until she foolishly lit all those candles.

  She shifted and something moved across the blanket. The tiny painting. Kali had found it hidden in Dorothy’s portrait, but now it was out for anyone to see. Had Kali locked the door when she left?

  No. She had been too agitated.

  So Graeber could walk in at any moment, take the painting, kill Lillian, and wait for Kali to return.

  Lillian had to stop him, but how could she get down the stairs and lock the door? She needed to hide the painting first. Without the painting and the apparent physical resemblances to it, Graeber had nothing to tie Lillian or Kali to Hitler. Lillian had kept up with the news. There was no confirmed DNA of Hitler, but the likeness in the little painting could work as a link. Then, God only knew what Graeber would use it for.

  She got out of bed and hurried across the room with the painting in one hand. It was only when she got to the door that she realized she’d forgotten her walker. Well, she’d have to manage without it.

  Lillian put the painting in her pocket with the locket and used the walls for balance, crossing the hallway to Dorothy’s bedroom. There was no furniture on this side of the room to support herself with, so she took several quick steps and practically crashed into the bed.

  She let out a little laugh. Not bad for a ninety-three-year-old who had recently had a stroke. Leaning against the side of the bed, she worked her way around to the side by the rocking chair.

  Dorothy’s portrait was on the floor, leaning against the wall. Lillian picked it up with some effort. It was heftier than she imagined, or perhaps it was because she’d lost so much strength.

  The brown paper backing was detached from the frame at the top. So that’s how Dorothy had hidden it. Lillian took the little painting from her pocket and slipped it into the opening in the back of the frame.

  Supporting herself against the wall with one hand, she held the heavy picture frame with the other and tried to hook the wire hanger onto the nail. The picture banged against the wall, but the wire wouldn’t catch.

  Her arms and legs trembled, tiring from the effort.

  She let go of the wall and attempted to hook the picture with both hands. She lost her balance and swayed, but caught herself on the side of the bed.

  Must do this. Can’t let him find the painting.

  She straightened herself up and went toward the wall taking small steps while holding Dorothy’s portrait high in front of her. She aimed for the nail and brought the picture down toward it.

  She could feel the wire catch.

  She reached for the arm of the rocking chair and eased herself into it. She needed to lock the front door, but she had to catch her breath first. At least he’d never find the tiny painting.

  She looked up at Dorothy’s sweet smile. Just like her dear mother’s. Her hand closed over the locket in her pocket and she rocked back and forth, thinking about the happy days of her childhood, the smell of challah baking, her mother singing.

  Oyfn pripetshik brent a fayerl,

  Un inshtub iz heys . . .

  A noise from downstairs, like a footstep. Lillian tensed. It had come from the dining room just below her. Had Kali come back?

  Lillian remained absolutely still. She would have heard the front door opening. Even when she slept soundly, the acoustics were such that the sound of the front door opening or closing carried through the living room fireplace up through the one in her bedroom. So Graeber couldn’t have gotten in.

  Yet—

  She eased herself up from the rocking chair, held the edge of the bed for support to get to the other side of the room, then used the momentum from several quick steps to reach the doorway without falling.

  Made it. She took another deep breath and balanced herself against the hallway wall until she was able to touch the banister. She clung to it with both hands. She brought her right leg down on
e step, then carefully brought the left foot beside it. Her arms trembled with exhaustion.

  It had been easier when Kali had helped her down the other day. Lillian had had no fear of falling with her granddaughter bracing her.

  But Lillian was on her own. She could do this. She had to do this.

  She brought her right foot down to the next step, following with the left. Then she went down one more step. Then another.

  She didn’t know how much time passed. Her focus was completely on reaching the next step, so when her foot touched the cold marble floor, it took Lillian a second to realize she was down. She’d done it.

  Now, she simply had to work her way around the foyer’s circular wall until she got to the front door. Her legs were shaking, but knowing she was close gave her a second wind.

  She took a couple of quick steps, arms outstretched, and touched the wall. She braced herself against it, working her way past the archway leading to the living room, then to the foyer table. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mottled mirror. An old woman with messy white hair and sunken blue eyes. Who would believe she’d once been a beauty? Lillian continued the next few steps and reached for the doorknob. She clung to it and turned the lock.

  Safe. She was safe.

  She leaned against the door and inhaled deeply. A heavy, musky smell filled her lungs. Like cat musk. She sniffed again. It was cat musk.

  The hair stood up on Lillian’s arms. A draft was coming through the hallway that led to the kitchen. The back door was open.

  He was here, in the house. She had to stop him before Kali returned.

  She started across the marble floor, but there was nothing to hold on to. She swayed, unable to keep her balance, and felt herself falling. She hit the marble floor hard. She remained frozen, afraid to move and discover she’d broken something.

  Her breathing was too fast, too loud. A creak came from the kitchen, then a bang. The sound of the back door closing.

  Nothing more. If Graeber was in the house, why hadn’t he come for her?

  She moved one arm, then the other, expecting to feel shooting pains, but there were none. Just the stiffness and joint pain from her arthritis. She wiggled her legs. Nothing broken, thank God.