The Devil's Madonna

by Sharon Potts

  Al jerked his arm out of Mitzi’s grip. “Calm down. Kali doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s under a lot of stress. I’d give her a mild sedative, but that’s not advisable at this stage in her pregnancy. She should go lie down.”

  “Listen to me,” Kali said. “I’m not going crazy and I don’t need rest. I’m all alone and I’m scared. Scared that whoever killed my grandmother will come back for me. To kill me so that Hitler’s blood won’t be perpetuated.”

  Mitzi and Al stared at her.

  Kali realized she’d been shouting. She lowered her voice. “Please. I can’t do this all by myself. I need you to believe me. To help me. Your grandchild is in danger.”

  “Our grandchild?” Mitzi said. “OUR GRANDCHILD? How dare you?” She went toward Kali swinging her arms, but Al held her back.

  “Stop it, Mitzi.”

  “How dare you?” Mitzi said, ignoring her husband. “How dare you come into our lives, acting like a good little Jewish wife? Acting like a sweet little daughter-in-law. First you do God-knows-what to our son and turn him into a freak. And now this? You despicable creature, you.”

  Al held Mitzi around the waist and she struggled to pull free.

  Kali pressed against the sofa, bracing herself against a physical attack. But she couldn’t leave things like this. “Please, Mitzi. I know how you feel. It was a shock to me, too. But you have to help me. Help your grandchild.”

  Mitzi held her hands over her ears and shrieked. “NO. Not our grandchild. You get rid of whatever you have growing inside you. We want no part of it. No part of you. Do you understand? Stay out of our lives, you devil, you. And stay away from our son.”

  “Shhhh, shhhh.” Al patted his wife’s back. “Come on, Mitzalah. Let’s go. Let’s go home.”

  They backed out of the living room into the foyer, Al supporting Mitzi as though she was an old, crippled woman. He bent over and picked up Mitzi’s shoes from the yellowed marble floor. Then he opened the front door and they stepped outside. He was still holding the shoes in his hand as the door closed after them.

  65

  And so it continues, Javier thought, as Beethoven’s powerful Appassionata reverberated through the room. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. He was dismayed by Gabriel’s reaction, but what did he expect? The truth would come to his son in its own time, just as it had to Javier. In the meantime, Javier had to carry out his own destiny. His father and the German people had waited too long for redemption.

  The painting lay in a black, velvet-lined box on his desk, a single ray of brightness from his flashlight caressing each curve, every rise of the thick paint. Despite the smudges of white and the damage caused by removing the outer layer of paint, the image was still vibrant.

  Her tiny red lips were parted and he was certain he could see the tip of her tongue, the glisten of her saliva.

  She had been as beautiful as her granddaughter now was. There was the strong, exquisite bone structure, the glossy blonde curls, the grace that his father had described to him. And in her four, sculpted, perfect arms she conveyed the future of the world, embodied in an infant—their Savior.

  He had wanted so much to tell his son how everything had finally fallen into place. How two days earlier, he had watched Kali running from the house, backing out her car as though in a panic. Although she hadn’t locked the front door, Javier used the key he’d found under the planter and entered the house through the back so the old woman wouldn’t hear him.

  He’d waited downstairs, listening to Ilse’s footsteps as she crossed into Kali’s bedroom. He recognized the rolling of a rocking chair, but the banging and scraping sounds against the wall had mystified him. Until he had gone into the bedroom after the old woman had taken a backward swan dive to the bottom of the stairs. That’s when he noticed the portrait hanging askew on the wall opposite the rocking chair. The memory of the noise connected, and, as though led by an invisible hand, he went directly to the portrait and found the tiny painting inside.

  He didn’t linger, fearing that Kali could return at any moment. From the top of her chest of drawers, he took a hairbrush filled with long golden strands.

  For the moment, he had everything he needed.

  The notes on the recording were pianissimo, softly tinkling in the background.

  He moved the flashlight back and forth, settling the light on the reddish brown initials in the corner of the painting. AH. Written in his very own blood. Javier had removed a small sample with a pair of tweezers and sent it off to a lab for DNA comparison with the follicles from golden strands of hair found in Kali’s hairbrush.

  There was no other known sample of the Leader’s DNA in the world. There had been false speculations about a skull found by the Russians at the site of Hitler’s bunker and burial chamber, but that had been recently dismissed as the remains of a female.

  But Javier knew from his father that this signature was the real thing. His father had told him that Hitler always put a little of his own blood in his signature. So after the experts analyzed the style and strokes of the painting itself, there would be no doubt that Adolf Hitler had been its creator and the blood in his signature, Hitler’s own. Then, it would be an easy step to make the connection to his granddaughter’s DNA.

  The testing and confirmation would take weeks, but Javier was ready to release the moment the results came through.

  Hundreds of thousands of contacts were on the list server and would receive an e-mail and a link to Hailstorm. The website was primed with photos of the miraculous painting, of Ilse Strauss as Leli Lenz, and of her pregnant granddaughter. Javier had written down the entire story, just as his father had told him, starting with the meeting between Leli Lenz and a benevolent “art professor” who called himself Dr. Altwulf. Javier had described Leli’s theatrical rise, the love affair, the conception of his child, the separation, and the temporary loss of the painting.

  He hid nothing, explaining how the Leader had chosen a Jewess, Ilse Strauss, just as Mary, another Jewess, had been chosen by God. To be purified and reborn.

  But Javier had been unable to complete the story. He did not yet know if Kali Miller would embrace her destiny as the new Madonna and stand by his side nurturing her soon-to-be-born child—the hope of the future of humanity. Though Javier’s ultimate dream was that someday Kali would bear his own child, who would then assume the mantle.

  He had, of course, considered destroying the seed that was growing inside her and planting his own, but as much as he would have enjoyed that prospect, Javier was practical. There was no assurance that Kali would conceive by Javier, and even if she did, months of precious time would be lost.

  No, he would continue as planned.

  Javier flashed on the parted red lips in the painting. Fortunately, whether or not the granddaughter was a willing participant, Javier could still have the joy of sowing his seed in the fruit from the Leader.

  The music became faster, frenzied, building to a powerful crescendo.

  How proud his father would have been of him.

  66

  Kali padded in her bare feet in the now-empty house, past the dim dining room, across the marble foyer floor where her grandmother had lain like a broken doll, then into the living room where her mother-in-law’s scent still hung in the air and Kali’s shoes lay discarded on the Oriental rug by the sofa.

  After Mitzi and Al left, Kali had locked the front door and set the alarm. But how safe was she here, where whoever had killed her grandmother knew to find her? She should run away and hide. Like her grandmother had done for the last seventy years. Lillian had spent those years remote and guilt ridden. Afraid to share anything of herself with her daughter, then her granddaughter. Living a secret was not living at all, and Kali wasn’t going to do that to herself and her own child. Problem was, someone out there knew her true identity, had the painting, and wanted Kali dead. Until Kali eliminated that threat, it would be impossible for her to live without fear.

  But
how could she, a pregnant woman alone with no idea who her adversary was, protect herself? Seth’s parents weren’t going to help her and now, after revealing her grandmother’s secret, she felt more exposed than ever. Fortunately, it was unlikely they’d repeat what Kali had told them this afternoon, not wanting to either acknowledge that their daughter-in-law had gone off the deep end, or worse—that there was some truth in her story.

  She needed to tell Neil. She felt like a bloodied boxer, knocked to the ground, then dragging herself up for potentially more abuse. But she had to do this. If her relationship with Neil couldn’t withstand this, then maybe it wasn’t meant to be. But she had to give it a try. She found her cell phone and dialed his number.

  Ten minutes later, she let him in through the front door, then locked it behind him. He’d changed out of the clothes he’d worn to the funeral into jeans and a T-shirt, but he hung back from her, like he used to so many years ago before they’d become friends.

  “Thanks for coming over,” she said, her hand hovering by the alarm pad.

  “I told you, I’m here for you.” He glanced over at the bottom of the stairwell as though expecting to see Lillian’s ghost, then back to Kali’s hand. “I see you’re planning on living here for a while.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “The alarm system.”

  She input the code. No reason to take chances. “I don’t know how long I’m staying, but while I’m here, I feel safer with an alarm.”

  “But you still won’t tell the police you don’t believe your grand-mother’s death was accidental.”

  “We’ll talk about that later. There are a few things I need to tell you first.”

  He took in her black dress, shoeless feet. “You haven’t thrown your dress into the garbage.” His voice had softened.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like you did after your mother died. Remember? You told me you threw it away, so you could make believe she wasn’t really dead.”

  “That’s right.” Kali looked down at the yellowed marble floor. Neil’s sneakered feet took a step toward her bare ones. Two large feet. Two small ones. He would protect her.

  “I guess you accept that your grandmother’s gone.”

  The big feet moved closer to hers, almost touching the tips of her toes.

  Neil took her into his arms. He kissed her hard as she pressed herself against him.

  “I’m glad you called,” he said into her ear. “I’m glad you decided to trust me with whatever’s been eating at you.”

  She looked up into his fogged eyeglasses. “I’m sorry I waited so long.”

  “You haven’t been yourself and I haven’t known what to say to you.”

  She slipped her hand in his. Hers so small in his large one. He would protect her.

  She led him down the hallway.

  “Where are we going?”

  She stopped in front of the door to the storage rooms. The étagère was back in its original place against a kitchen wall, no longer needed to block the door.

  Neil pushed his glasses up as he cocked his head. “Up there? Who are we hiding from?”

  “No one. It’s just the place I associate with secrets and I’m tired of keeping them.”

  She went up the creaking stairs, grit sticking to the bottoms of her bare feet. She flicked on the light. The cot was open from a few nights before and she thought she could still smell their lovemaking mingled with the mildew.

  Neil sat down on the edge of the cot, his elbows resting on his thighs as he watched her.

  She remained beside the old oak icebox and picked at some white paint with her broken fingernail.

  “So talk to me, Kali.”

  “You know, it’s strange,” she said. “My entire life has been built around so many lies and secrets, I’m not clear who I really am.”

  “You’re Kali,” he said softly. “The rainbow gypsy. The sad-eyed girl who sees Bruce Springsteen’s music in primary colors.”

  She took in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “Something happened back then that I never told you about.”

  The cot groaned as he shifted. “Why not?”

  There was something beneath the white paint. A spatter of red paint. “I was afraid you’d be angry. That you’d reject me.”

  “Come here.” He patted the cot. She sat down next to him and he put his arm around her. “Haven’t you figured out yet that I love you? That nothing you tell me will make me feel any differently about you?”

  “I hope so. I really hope so.”

  “Trust me, Kali.”

  She took in his scent as she rested her head against his arm. “I got pregnant.”

  “That’s pretty obvious.” He put his hand on her belly.

  “I’m talking about fourteen years ago.”

  He pulled back. “What are you saying?”

  “When you and I made love that first time fourteen years ago, I got pregnant.”

  “With my baby?”

  She nodded.

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t want it.”

  “Damn, Kali.” He sucked in his lips. “What happened? Do I have a kid somewhere? A fourteen-year-old kid that I never got to know? Tell me—do I have a son? A daughter?”

  She shook her head. “I lost it.”

  “You had an abortion?”

  “No, I miscarried. Just after my first trimester.”

  He looked down at the dusty floor and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was young and scared.”

  “It’s okay.” He put his hand on the back of Kali’s neck and brought his face around toward hers. “That was a long time ago.” He kissed her. “Right now, I’m looking forward to being a father to this little guy or girl, and to having a few of our own.”

  She pulled out of his embrace. “There’s more.”

  “I see.” He straightened up.

  “It’s about my grandmother. I finally understand why she hid the truth.”

  “About being Jewish?”

  “Being Jewish, an actress—everything about the last seventy years was a lie.” She picked off a long gold hair from the skirt of her black dress and noticed her knees were shaking. “There was a painting she’d hidden in the pocketbook in the attic.”

  “In the handkerchief?”

  “That’s right. I found the painting in my mother’s room and showed it to my grandmother. I asked her to tell me the truth about it.”

  The cot creaked beneath them. “And?”

  “She told me.” Kali’s broken thumbnail caught on the black fabric of her dress. “It was terrible, Neil.” She looked into his eyes, hoping he’d see her pain and not make her relive this, but he just stared back at her, his brow creased.

  “I didn’t want to believe her,” Kali said. “But this time I knew she wasn’t lying. I’m sure she was killed because of it, and the painting stolen.”

  “But, Kali—”

  “No, listen to me. The painting’s gone and whoever took it will be back to kill me.”

  “Kill you? You’re serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’re calling the police right now.” He reached into his pocket for his phone.

  “Wait.”

  “Wait for what? If you’re in danger, we have to get the police involved.”

  “I’m afraid of what might happen if anyone finds out the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  Trust him. He’s not like Seth’s parents. He loves me. He’ll take care of me.

  “What my grandmother told me. The man who made the painting was my mother’s real father. My real grandfather.”

  “Okay. And why is that so terrible?”

  “My grandmother didn’t know who he was. He wore a disguise. And he didn’t know she was Jewish. It wasn’t until it was too late that she realized who he was. And that’s why she felt responsible for everything. For Kristallnacht, for
the Holocaust.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Because he was so angry when he found out she was Jewish.”

  “What are you talking about, Kali?”

  “And now there’s someone out there who knows who my real grandfather was. Who stole the painting and wants me dead. So there’s no proof. No connection.” She was breathless.

  “No proof of what?”

  “That he had Jewish offspring.”

  “Who, Kali? Who the hell are you talking about?”

  “Hitler.”

  “Hitler? What about Hitler?”

  “He made the painting.”

  Neil stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m his granddaughter.”

  “No, you’re not. That’s crazy.”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “She lied to you.”

  “I saw the painting. My grandmother’s story makes sense. Everything fits.”

  “You can’t be Hitler’s granddaughter.”

  “Oh, God, Neil. You have to believe me.”

  He got up from the cot and paced the small room in his large sneakers. He didn’t speak for an uncomfortably long time. The stagnant air coated her lungs, making it difficult to breathe.

  “You’re Hitler’s granddaughter,” he said, finally, like he was repeating a phrase in a foreign language, without comprehension. He looked around the room, at the icebox, the broken chairs, the cushions from the lawn furniture, the cans of paint. “You are Adolf Hitler’s granddaughter.”

  She nodded.

  “Adolf Hitler, who tried to eradicate the Jewish race.”

  “Yes.”

  “My grandmother was in a concentration camp.” His voice was a monotone. He stood by the icebox, picking on the same section of paint that Kali had chipped away at. The white had given way to a large blob of red. “She didn’t like to talk about it, but it would come out in bits and pieces. The starvation, the abuse, the fear. She was young and pretty, so she survived, but she lost her parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone in the Holocaust.”

  “My grandmother’s family all died, too,” Kali said.