They passed the open square of Potsdamer Platz and wound through the Kurfurstendamm's more squalid section, where soap-streaked windows, spiderwebbed with shadows, were made lurid by the moonlight. Dilapidated marquees announced burlesque shows. Handwritten signs pasted on shop windows advertised going-out-of-business sales. Butcher shops boasted of specials on high-quality meat--Grade A cats and dogs, more than likely, Sol was sure. Homeless huddled in doorways or lay curled on the pavement. Whores with black, slicked-down windstoss--pixy-cut--haircuts and throats heavy with Charleston beads leaned against Litfass-Saulen, adding their bodies to the peeling advertisements pasted around the thick, two-meter posts. The women exchanged gossip and cigarettes with homosexuals sporting sheepskin jackets, striped sailors' shirts, and tan dungarees.
Life in the city was unkind, Sol thought, yet at that moment he felt far less frightened by the loiterers than by the friend he had known most of his life. Lately he hardly knew Erich at all.
"Queers! I hate them." Erich picked up speed. "They should all be shot."
With seemingly superhuman balance he steered the bike with the palm of his crushed hand and, reaching under Sol's left arm, held an object before Sol's nose. His thumb was hooked through the trigger guard of Herr Weisser's pistol. The weapon looked very large and very silver beneath the street lamp.
Sol swallowed in fear. "You stole it?"
"No. I wrote my beloved papa a letter," Erich said, his head down as he pedaled, "explaining that I thought I should inherit it a little early!" He straightened and, thrusting out his lower lip, blew a breath up over his sweaty face.
"You make me sick when you talk like that." Sol looked at his friend in disgust. "Good thing you can't fire it."
"The hell I can't."
"I thought your papa said he had taken out the firing pin, after...." Sol did not feel like finishing.
"I made a new firing pin on the metal lathe at school...out of a Groschen nail. And I've got bullets...."
"What were you really angry about that night?" Sol asked. "We've never talked about it."
"Papa, mostly. He's so...weak. And Miriam...that whole thing was so unfair. Rathenau not inviting me, I mean. It makes me mad, sometimes. It's like you people have a special club and there's no way in--"
"You people?" Sol felt his stomach forming another knot.
"Don't get mad at me," Erich said. "I just mean that it's as if you have this club and the rules are that you help each other--like we do at camp. It's a club, too--"
A club where you help each other to hate better, Sol thought, glancing uneasily at the people they passed. Judging by his friend's anxiety to get through this part of town as fast as possible, Erich's bragging about roaming Berlin's alleys after midnight was doubtless just that--bragging. Like saying he had slipped a hand beneath the tie-strings of Ursula Müller's underwear. His evenings out probably consisted of nothing more than beer, song, and knockwurst around a Freikorps campfire.
"Slow down!" Sol shouted as the handlebar nut rammed into him.
Erich pedaled faster. They rode on in silence through the city, past an abandoned Bolle Wagen, the milk cart's giant ladle and pails of milk and buttermilk gone with the nag that had once pulled it daily to Sol's neighborhood. According to the Tageblatt, when the nag collapsed, hungry Berliners fought its owner and each other for the horse meat and the warm, protein-rich blood.
At last they entered Zehlendorf and headed toward the Grünewald. Three-and-a-half kilometers long and fifty meters wide, the Kurfurstendamm stretched from Kaiser Wilhelm-Gedachtnis Kirche all the way to Koenigsallee. At its eastern end were some of Berlin's most elegant shops; at its western end stood the graceful suburban homes of Zehlendorf. In between was the city's sordid section.
Sol felt a stab of resentment and loss. Although many Jewish businessmen and industrialists lived in the two suburbs, this was a world he would never inhabit. Among the shadowy lushness of oaks and chestnut trees, slender white-stemmed birches stood guard, shining silver, like armored lords before the moon. Except for the occasional Audi or Model-T puttering past them, or the prestigious Buick that swerved to avoid their unexpected presence, the streets were deserted. Twice, flashlights lanced toward the road--probably watchmen determining what creaky machine would dare disturb the sleep of their employers.
He imagined being married to Miriam, living in a villa and surveying the tree-lined avenue from behind a tall window. Erich could be Otto von Bismarck, a royal guest with a taste for fine wines and rare books. The three of them would be out riding near Jagdschloss Grünewald, their headquarters for the hunt.
But such imaginings served only to deepen his sense of loss. The time had come, he thought, to accept the fact that the door Walther Rathenau briefly cracked open was forever shut.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By the time Erich steered into Wannsee Park and dumped the bike, his chest felt tight with the effort of pedaling, and his breath was coming in short harsh huffs. He looked around uneasily, in case the other boys were still on this side of the lake, saw that the picnic area was empty, and sprinted across the sand to the edge of the Wannsee.
Beside the small dock was the beach for swimmers and, beneath the trees, an open-air restaurant with signs that listed rules for picnickers. The largest one read: "Families May Brew Their Own Coffee Here."
"See those willows?" Erich whispered when Sol joined him. He pointed across the lake. "That's where we're going."
"I know--" Sol did not sound happy. "What was that ride? 'Joy in Hardship' lesson one?"
His Youth camp's motto was "Strength through joy in nature." Sol consistently called it, "joy in hardship." Before the war, the cluster of Spartan three-sided huts had been an apolitical Wandervögel camp for children who liked nature, hiking and singing around a campfire. Now the Freikorps ran it.
Erich squinted toward the willows. Shouldn't have dragged Sol into this, he thought, praying that none of the really tough guys had decided to spend the night at the camp. Even if some of the boys had decided to go home, there were always two or three who had run away from their families and had nowhere else to go, and at least one leader who stayed to guard the camp. If he and Sol were caught hanging around, it would simply be a question of who was in the most trouble--Sol, or himself for bringing Sol there.
Crouching, Erich crept along the beach. "We'll have to row across." He pointed toward a rowboat beached at the fence that enclosed Wannsee Park. "But first swear you'll never tell anyone about tonight. If you do, I'll turn you into a vampire, just like--blaah!" He jumped on Sol, teeth bared and fingers curved like claws. "Just like Nosferatu!"
"Idiot!" Sol shoved him away. "I won't tell. What's the big secret, anyway?"
"Shake on it." Erich clasped Sol's hand in the Wandervögel handshake. He felt a momentary resistance and stared deeply into his friend's eyes. Then Sol grinned and Erich felt his grip harden. "I better never find out you broke your word," he said.
They pushed the boat onto the moon-dappled water. As Erich rowed, Sol clutched the oarlocks to help keep them from creaking. "We should have wrapped the oars in silk," he whispered, apparently beginning to get caught up in the adventure. "That's what Hessian spies--"
Erich put a finger to his lips and glanced over at a sleeping fisherman whose canoe bobbed gently in the water. Watching people fish sure wasn't interesting, as it used to be. Not since Berlin banned the used of grenades.
When they reached the other side they tied the boat to a branch and crept into the foliage, wilder and denser on this side of the lake and still wet from the previous evening's rain. By the time Erich parted the last set of branches and peered into one of the huts, he was as damp as if he had been walking in a drizzle.
"Do you see her?" he whispered, examining the tiered bunks inside, three on each side. A few of them held sleeping figures.
"I see them!"
"Shsh!" Erich clamped a hand over Sol's mouth and pointed toward a young sentry who sat, hunched over and a
sleep, beside a blackened fire pit.
Sol sputtered and backed away. "I didn't think anyone would be here," he whispered. "I should go home."
"Alone? Out there?" Erich started crawling through the undergrowth. He felt Sol's hand on his shoulder, holding him back. "We're crawling around some woods in the dark, looking for a pregnant mutt--"
"Don't call her that!"
"We're in danger of being beaten up by your buddies and our families are probably worried sick," Sol said, ignoring him. "But that's okay because we're here to see your favorite dog."
"Please, Sol," Erich said. "She's the top of the Thuringia strain, the camp mascot, and pregnant. I asked for one of her puppies but they said no because they'd taken her all the way to Holland, to Doorn, to mate her."
"They mated her with one of the Kaiser's dogs?"
"Not just one of the Kaiser's dogs--last year's German Grand Champion. Remember that Movietone segment about the Sieger Dog Show? Remember Harras von der Juch? That's the sire."
"If she is so valuable, how come one of your leaders didn't stay around to take care of her?"
"They're stupid, that's why."
Sol could not fail to be impressed, Erich thought as he started crawling again. In front of him, twigs crackled softly as he moving ahead. Grace, mated to Harras, the offspring of Etzel von Oeringen, son of Nores of the Kriminalpoletzei! Then again, what did Sol know? He couldn't commune with dogs or rattle off their family lines as if they were his own.
Well, Sol did know Etzel, but everyone knew the dog that had been taken to America and became the star of the Strongheart movies, each of which Erich had seen close to a dozen times. He was saving for another movie marathon when the new German shepherd film came to Berlin, the one starring Rin Tin Tin, a dog bred in the trenches during the war.
"Why did we come here?" Sol asked. "I mean, really?"
"I told you. I heard her calling. Also, I want one of her pups," Erich answered truthfully. "If we're there when she gives birth, they'll never know."
"What if they catch us stealing?" Sol sounded scared.
"They'll scream at me, discipline me--threaten to cut my nuts off and feed them to the squirrels." He looked at Sol. "With you they might not just threaten."
"Because I'm Jewish?" Sol narrowed his eyes in anger.
"Because you're not Freikorps."
Sol backed away but Erich grabbed him. "Just kidding." He knew his voice lacked conviction. "That's where Grace is supposed to be." He pointed to a tiny hut whose front was covered with chicken wire. "But I know she's not there. She...escaped. When that kid watching her fell asleep."
"Maybe she's resigned from the Freikorps," Sol said.
"I'll find her." Erich led Sol behind the other huts and along the far side of the camp until they reached the biggest hut. The outside of its rear wall looked like the heavily decorated chest of a general; nearly a hundred sports medallions hung alongside four javelins. Beneath them, sheltered from the weather by an overhang, were shelves cluttered with badminton rackets and nets, soccer balls, shot-puts, medicine balls, and an array of black track shoes.
"That's mine." Erich pointed at the longest javelin. It was white, with two red stripes taped near the center. The chrome tip was honed to a gleaming point. "Isn't she a beauty?"
"Yes, but where's the dog?"
Feeling more than a little hurt by Sol's quick dismissal of his javelin, Erich concentrated. Suddenly he bounded away from the hut and toward an enormous weeping willow on the west side of the camp, its canopy so full it touched the ground. He waited for Sol to catch up before he held the branches apart.
He was shocked at what he saw.
Though Grace could not have chosen a more pastoral sanctuary, she looked anything but the consort of a German champion. She raised her head to see who had intruded upon her. Then, as if the action had completely enervated her, she laid her head back down on the ground. Her head appeared abnormally extended, her ribs were prominent, her abdomen sagged. Moonlight, seeping through the willow, mottled her coat, which looked gray and lifeless. In the lee of her belly, their eyes closed to slits, their tiny paws curled and vulnerable, lay two pink hairless pups, covered with bloody mucous and forest duff.
A third pup lay to one side, swaddled in a bluish membrane and still attached to its mother.
Feebly Grace wriggled her mouth closer to the umbilical cord so that she could chew through it. As she moved her head her throat spasmed. She gagged and jerked in what was obviously terrible pain.
"Erich?"
"She's going to die." Erich felt a lump in his throat, and tears were right near the surface.
Again the dog picked up her head. This time she held it rigid; her eyes bulged, her throat convulsed. A stream of bloody vomit gushed from her mouth. Her head slumped and she lay staring, through sad dark eyes, at the willow trunk.
Erich wanted to rush to Grace, stroke her, comfort her; at the same time, he was afraid to touch her--afraid, and nauseated. She used to be so beautiful. He pictured Miriam lying there, pregnant and...ugly. When they were married he would tell her, no children!
"For God's sake, Erich, what is that?"
Sol clutched Erich's shoulder and pointed at a distended sac that lay on the dog's hind side. Pink and quivering and slicked with blood, the sac looked like an oversized fleshy larvae--an oval reddish mass stippled with spongy-looking knobs.
Shaking, Erich knelt to examine the sac. Grace looked at him, and shivered.
"What's happened to her?" Sol whispered.
"I think this came out of her." Erich pulled a face.
"Ugh! What is it?"
"I don't know," Erich said slowly, "I have this feeling...I think...she wants us to put it back in."
"No!" Sol's face was ashen. "We'll kill her. We don't know anything about that stuff."
Carefully, Erich lifted the membrane-covered pup and pulled off the film. His stomach clenched and he had to breathe deeply to keep from throwing up. "We should go for help, but we can't. If I bring back a leader and he finds out you're a Jew, we're both in bad trouble--"
"And if the others find out about Grace being here, you'll never get a puppy," Sol said, a cynical tone in his voice.
Erich gently set the whelp next to its mother. "Remember what I told you about some of the camps?" He paused, wanting Sol's full attention. "There's no guessing what they would do to you."
Sol huddled next to Grace. "So what do we do now?"
"We'll need hot water, clean towels--like in the films." Erich rose to his feet. "Here, guard yourself with this." Acting a lot more casual than he felt, he threw his father's gun on the ground near Sol's feet. "I won't be long."
He hurried through the tall grass. Behind him he could hear Sol speaking to Grace in the soothing tones his parents used when he was ill. What, he wondered, had really made the leaders bring hatred into the camp?
What was so bad about Jews, anyway?
Take Sol--he'd never had a problem with Sol being a Jew. But then Sol was different. He was just...Sol. Spatz. A sparrow.
The leaders had said that Germans should follow Martin Luther's suggestion. Seize all Jewish property and send the Jews to mines and quarries and logging camps.
Now there was a stupid idea. The Jews he knew weren't exactly the most physical people in the world.
Dismissing the subject, as he usually did, he crept around the camp looking for things he needed or might need. He found a pot and poured in water from the drinking barrel, letting the liquid run over his hand so it would not ting against the metal and wake someone up. The top bunk of the empty hut nearest the willow turned out to be strewn with bedcovers and camping gear--some cry-baby who'd had second thoughts about staying the night, Erich figured. He flung two blankets and a couple of dirty towels over his shoulder; he got lucky and found a flashlight, which he put in his hip pocket together with a sewing kit and a fishing leader. Then he sprinted back to the willow.
"Couldn't get hot water. This'll have to
work." He tried to sound confident. This birthing business was awfully complicated. C'mon, Grace, he begged silently. Tell me what to do.
"What are we going to do?" Sol asked, echoing Erich's plea to the dog.
Erich hoped Grace would commune with him, but--nothing. "She's too weak. We'll have to decide as we go. If only I could remember what the Rittmeister wrote about whelping!"
They spread one blanket on the ground, maneuvered the animals onto it, and covered them with the other. Grace did not resist. There was a dead weight and a rank wet odor to her, and her skin felt clammy and coarse.
"She's feverish," Erich said. "Feel her nose--it's hot and dry." He drew the blankets around her, forming a cocoon for the pups. "Hold her still!" He folded part of a blanket forward to expose her hindquarters. "This is going to hurt her."
Sol cradled the dog's head in his lap and leaned over to brace the torso with his hands. Erich turned on the flashlight and wedged it in the crook of the willow. It cast a weak circle of light over the dog.
Kneeling beside Grace, Erich plunged his hands and then a towel into the water pot. "Don't even breathe, Solomon." He began to clean the sac. "Just hold her."
The dog's eyes were filled with apprehension and pain; she was shivering slightly, but she did not struggle.
"I've got her," Sol said.
"I know. I know. We have to be careful. I think it's her uter-in." He felt sick as he softly put his fingers on the 'thing.'
Think about something else. He glanced at Sol, whose face was set in a stoic expression. Bet he's thinking about something he read in a book. That's his answer to everything.
As gently as he could, Erich continued to work. He pictured his own bookshelf at home. Though he pretended he never read--mostly to annoy Sol--he owned many books about dogs and uniforms and Imperial history. He could quote passages verbatim from lots of them. His favorite was The German Shepherd Dog in Word and Picture by Rittmeister Max von Stephanitz, the "father" of the German shepherd. Through controlled breeding, he had produced a master-breed based on efficiency and beauty. According to him, the German shepherd was not a means to an end but an end in itself.
Child of the Light Page 14
