Saints and Villains

by Denise Giardina

  The door of the truck cab opened. Fred twisted around and pulled on Dietrich’s arm. They leaped from the truck and landed hard just as the door slammed. Fortunately the man walked away instead of coming to the back of the truck. They stumbled and ran to a ditch just beyond the road, where they threw themselves flat. Only then were they able to get their bearings. The truck had drawn up at the edge of a cornfield. The man who had driven the truck leaned against a fence and smoked a cigarette. He took a watch from his pocket, held it up to the moonlight, then put it back and turned to look toward a house at the far edge of the field. He began to hum.

  They stayed quite still except to peer cautiously above the ditch line, for they were unprotected except for the muddy depression they lay in. After a time, two more men appeared, walking one behind the other along a row of corn. They carried shovels.

  “How many you got this time?” one asked the truck driver.

  “I think they’s five.”

  “Jesus Christ. I’ll be pulling out another row at this rate. Won’t be able to use any of this field.”

  “Rich dirt other ways,” the driver said.

  The men laughed.

  “Let’s get ’em then,” said one man. “I got to be up with the chickens tomorrow.”

  They came to the back of the truck, and the driver lowered the gate. One of the men turned away, dragging a corpse by the legs. He stopped.

  “Hey! They’s somebody in that ditch!” He dropped the corpse and came toward the ditch. “Get your gun, Daddy!”

  They were up and running down the road even as he called out, dropping out of sight when the track dipped over the hill, pounding around a curve, the precipitous drop propelling them faster and faster even as there came a sharp cracking sound and a whine above their heads. They leaped from the road and went over the embankment, sliding and tearing through the woods with a terrible racket, stumbled across a level shelf, followed it until their way was blocked by a thick stand of rhododendron, then dropped over the edge again, twisting, leaping, falling over roots, and at last sliding to rest against a broad tree trunk.

  Dietrich rested his cheek against the rough bark, air slicing his lungs with a painful whistling sound. Fred was on his knees, arms wrapped around the trunk. Little by little they breathed more slowly until they could hear another, more delicate rushing sound, far below. It was the river. Dietrich slid to a sitting position.

  “I think we are near a cliff,” he said.

  “Don’t look,” said Fred. “I think we almost went over a cliff.”

  Gingerly, for every bone in his body ached, Dietrich edged around the trunk and peered out into the darkness. A fresh breeze cooled his scratched and burning face. Just beyond a large flat rock at the base of their tree was a precipice above the band of river, black in the changing nightlight.

  “Shit,” Dietrich said. He felt faint.

  Fred started to laugh, a bit hysterically. “Where did you learn that word?”

  “From you, of course.” Dietrich started to laugh as well.

  “Sssshh!” Fred said. “Listen.”

  Dietrich raised his head, afraid the men might have found them. The river sang like the airy rush of a seashell pressed to the ear. Then he was aware of a distant steady pounding. He realized he had been hearing it all along but thought it was the beating of his heart.

  “It’s the tunnel,” said Fred. “They’re down there right now. Drilling.”

  They sat in silence for a time. Dietrich thought that Fred wept, but couldn’t be sure, for his face was turned away, and in shadow. At last they got up and made their painful way down the mountain.

  The Word of the Lord

  THEY LAY ON THEIR BACKS in the cattle car, which was empty save for scattered bits of straw and dried dung from a shipment of Florida livestock unloaded in Winston-Salem. They were bone-weary, for one had been tending the dying and two had spent the best part of the night climbing down the labyrinth of Gauley Mountain. They sprawled, heads resting upon meager piles of straw husks, half-dreaming though afraid to dream.

  Except for Earl Harvey. He paced and sliced shafts of moonlight with bony arms in one of the fits of frenzy which periodically overtook him.

  Doc said, “Stand still, Earl.”

  “Can’t.” Earl slung his arms, pushed off the wall of the cattle car. “Got to move. Moved since I was little, under the trains. Lived right by the railroad tracks, me and my momma. Used to go out there, me not four years old. Laid down under the trains when they stopped. Stayed there till they started up again. Then moved in and out, behind the wheels. Loved to roll. Rolled over top the rails. Always behind the wheels though.”

  “Earl,” Fred said, “you’re crazy.”

  Back and forth, Earl crashed into the side of the boxcar, pushed away and propelled himself across to the opposite wall. “My momma found out, she whipped me all the way home. Tied me to the bedpost to keep me inside. Always got away though. Couldn’t stop rolling under trains. How I learned to move. Had to learn how to move. What I come on this earth to do. Preacher, you know what you come on this earth to do?”

  “No,” Fred said. He stood abruptly and went to the far end of the boxcar, where he stood with his back to them, squinting through a wide slat that let in the white dawn.

  Doc had risen stiffly and took Earl—who turned docile at his touch—by the elbow and led him to a corner. Earl slumped sideways with his head resting on Doc’s thigh, muttering beneath his breath.

  Dietrich said, “What is happening in that tunnel?”

  “I hear they run into silica in there,” Doc said. “Company didn’t expect to find it when they started drilling, but now they found it, they want it. Valuable stuff. But it’s fine-ground glass those men are breathing in. Cuts their lungs to pieces. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow.”

  “And these companies know this?”

  “Don’t let their own people in without masks,” said Doc. “Hell, they know what it is. Indians in South America dug silica for the Spanish four hundred years ago.”

  Dietrich joined Fred and began to tell him what Doc had said, but Fred raised his hand and shook his head. “I’ll know soon enough,” he said. And he turned on Dietrich a face filled with fear. “When we arrived yesterday I told Earl there wasn’t any church here,” he said. “What if there is? What if it’s my church?”

  Dietrich felt his mouth go dry. “You have a church,” he said.

  “A church that never has felt right. Never felt the hand of the Lord on my shoulder when I walked in that church. I felt it back there. Heard the voice in my inner ear. That’s what a call is, and it’s a terrible thing. I don’t want it, not at all.”

  “Can this all be in your head?” Dietrich put his hand on Fred’s shoulder. “It has been a shocking day, and you haven’t slept.”

  Fred shook his head. Dietrich watched him for a time and then said, both skeptical and wistful, “How do you hear such calls? Why do you receive them and not I?”

  “I hope you never get a call,” Fred said. “I wouldn’t wish it on you. Go on back to Germany. You’ve had your little adventure. Go on back home to your rich family where it’s safe.”

  “And what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know how just yet,” Fred said, “but I’m coming back here.”

  He turned and pressed his cheek against the wide-set slats of the cattle car. The new morning was so bright the train seemed to hurtle through a tunnel of flashing light.

  Domine deus, rex caelestis

  Deus, Pater omnipotens,

  Domine Fili unigenite,

  Jesu Christe.

  Domine Deus,

  Agnus Dei,

  Filius Patris…

  Lord God, Heavenly King

  Almighty God and Father

  Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father

  Lord God, Lamb of God,

  Son of the Father…

  Doppelgänger

  1924

  THE DOG is long dead, and
the boy Alois is a man who has entered a meeting room in Berlin for the first time. He finds the city appallingly cold and ugly, and the room is a relief. It is plain, like the schoolroom at home in Schönberg, the walls peeling here and there, the floorboards scuffed, all in a lived-in way. The only decoration is the bright red-white-and-black flag on the wall. He stands with the other new members up from Bavaria, afraid to look for a seat until told to do so. Then Hitler enters the room and moves down the line, stopping to talk to each recruit. He moves slowly, as if he has all the time in the world for them.

  “And what is your name?”

  “Alois.”

  He clenches his fists to keep his hands from shaking.

  “Alois. It’s my brother’s name.” A shadow passes over Hitler’s face, as though a cloud has passed over the sun. “And my father’s.”

  Some blessed impulse causes Bauer to blurt, “I despise my father!”

  Hitler nods. His face shows he is greatly moved. “Never mind, Alois. Tell me, what are your gifts?”

  “Gifts?”

  “Everyone has a gift. What can you offer the Fatherland? Sport? Public speaking? Music?”

  Bauer brightens. “I adore music.”

  “Wagner?”

  “Mozart!”—then adds, thinking quickly, “And Wagner as well!”

  He wants to say, Actually I’m not a real musician and I knew nothing of music until I joined the party, I simply love to listen. But Hitler has already passed on to the next man.

  Berlin, September, 1932

  ON DIETRICH’S RETURN from America, the family noted the changes. He had lost weight, and shiny patches of scalp showed through the carefully arranged hair on the crown of his head. More alarming, the periods of melancholy which had always afflicted him seemed to come more frequently, and he spent a great deal of time to himself in the room at the top of his parents’ house, his light burning long into the night. Old von Harnack next door, who often saw the squares of light on the tiles of his lavatory wall when he got up to relieve himself, inquired after Dietrich to the elder Bonhoeffer.

  “America,” Dr. Bonhoeffer said curtly, “seems to have turned Dietrich’s brain to porridge.”

  He was the only one of the children who still lived at home. Sabine, whom Dietrich missed sorely, was in Göttingen with her husband, Gerhard, raising their first child. Dietrich saw Baby Suse most often, though in his absence everyone else had stopped calling her Baby Suse, since it was clear she was the most worldly of them all. Suse had disregarded her family’s advice and taken a flat of her own.

  One day, on the first afternoon that possessed a bite of autumn chill, Suse stopped to show off her new hat. It was gray felt and cut like a man’s, except it sported a spray of baby’s breath at the band. The butler said Frau Bonhoeffer had gone out to play bridge with friends in Dahlem. Suse was standing in the hall, trying to decide whether to wait or come back later, when a distant thumping, rhythmic and insistent, wafted from above. She looked up and began to climb the stairs. The two housemaids, Elli and Maria, drifted along the first-floor landing, caressing the dark oak railing with white cloths. They were also listening. Maria, the younger, smiled at Suse and said, “He plays this music every day.” Still above, but quite distinctly, they heard the creaking of floorboards, accompanied by Wat-dat-do Wat-dat-do Wat-dat-do wat-dat-do wat-dat-do.

  Suse crept up the stairs, but she needn’t have worried about being overheard, for the music was loud enough to drown out any other sound. She peeked into the room.

  Dietrich was dancing. His back was to the door, his arms raised to grab and twirl an invisible partner. He moved deftly, hips swaying slightly to the growl of a throaty saxophone, eyes shut and fingers stroking the back of a phantom companion. Suse retreated quickly, as embarrassed as if she’d interrupted him making love.

  She wanted to tell someone. But it was not a thing to share with the brothers and sisters, much less their parents. Sabine would understand, but she was so rarely in Berlin. Gerhard was being harassed at the university in Göttingen. Many students refused to attend his classes, so that his voice echoed around near empty lecture halls, and death threats garnished with crudely drawn swastikas had been slipped beneath his office door. Sabine, with the same protective instinct that led her to lie awake at night for the child Dietrich, would not leave her husband, even for a few days.

  Then Suse thought of Hans.

  Hans von Dohnanyi, Christel’s husband, was Dietrich’s favorite brother-in-law. Because his own family had disintegrated when he was a boy, Hans had pursued the Bonhoeffers like a starving man. And yet the lonely years of avoiding his mother had schooled him. He was working at age fifteen to pay his mother’s debts, worked still longer to put himself through university, and had recently become the most prominent young lawyer in the Justice Ministry. All without the help of a single Bonhoeffer. So Karl and Karl-Friedrich were never able to bully him.

  Suse invited herself to dinner at the Dohnanyi home in Sacrow. After the roast pork and stewed prunes, while Christel was putting the children to bed, she sat on the veranda with Hans, sipping coffee and admiring the sunset across the flat mirror of the Jungfernsee. Suse told him what she had seen in Dietrich’s room.

  Hans smoked his pipe and thought for a moment. “How does he pass his time when he isn’t hiding up there?”

  “He’s teaching at the university, so there are lectures to prepare and papers to read.”

  “Still in his room.”

  “Yes. And Karl-Friedrich says he’s a reputation for being very demanding, so his classes are small. Not that theology is a terribly popular subject anyway. At least he seems to enjoy his writing. He’s doing something on the nature of the church.”

  “Ummm.”

  “He preaches now and then. But he never tells us ahead of time. It’s as though he were ashamed. I found out by accident last month he was to be at Trinity Church and went to hear him. Without telling him, actually, and I hid behind a pillar. I’m afraid—” she hated to admit this—“the church was nearly empty, and I heard people grumbling about the sermon as they left. I gather he’s got a reputation for being difficult, so people stay away.”

  Hans chuffed away on his pipe like a locomotive, and stared at the lake, his eyeglasses glowing a light orange in the sunset. He rubbed the tip of his nose—a most marvelous nose, sharply delicate but with a pugnacious tilt—as was his habit when deliberating. Then he sat up straight. “What our Dietrich needs,” he declared, “is a woman.”

  “That,” Suse said with satisfaction, “is what I concluded as well.”

  “And who better,” said Hans, “to find a woman for Dietrich than Suse?”

  “Ah.” She smiled. “I even have someone in mind.”

  He laughed. “Of course you do. Tell me, what sort of woman would come to mind for our Dietrich?”

  “She’s intelligent. A few years older than Dietrich, but he won’t mind. Jewish, but he won’t mind that either. Besides, her grandfather converted to Christianity years ago. And she studied theology in Bonn. He’ll like that very much.”

  “But what does she look like?”

  A man’s question. “Brisk,” Suse said. “Full of energy.”

  “Which means homely,” Hans said.

  “It does not. It means she’s not pretty, but not unattractive either. She has a friendly face. Yes, that says it best. Friendly.”

  “Friendly.”

  “What? Do you want Marlene Dietrich? She’s perfect for him.”

  “And what is this friendly person’s name?”

  “Elisabeth Hildebrandt. Her father is a surgeon at the Charité. Father knows him.”

  “And of course you’ve thought how to bring Elisabeth and Dietrich together?”

  “That is the easiest part. Elisabeth and I are helping start a new club for underprivileged youth. Actually we’re bankrolling most of it between us. And Dietrich has been saying how he misses his work with young people in Harlem. He taught that confirmation clas
s in Prenzlauer Berg last year too, and you recall how he enjoyed it. Naturally he’ll want to become involved.”

  When she came downstairs, Christel saw them through the French doors, leaning against one another on the wicker couch, giggling. In some families, this might suggest a flirtation, but no Bonhoeffer would assume such a thing. Though if pressed, Suse might have admitted she did fancy Hans. If her sister hadn’t grabbed him first. But such thoughts passed quickly through her mind. It was Dietrich she planned to seduce.

  He knew right away what Suse was about. She had always been an open book, the kind of child who dropped so many hints about what she was giving for Christmas presents that everyone had to pretend to be surprised. He was tempted to turn down her invitation, except that he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. So he left the university after his afternoon lecture and walked up Unter den Linden amid a shower of lime leaves. New York had altered the way he looked at Berlin. As claustrophobic as he had first found the crowded canyons of Manhattan, the prairielike vastness of Unter den Linden with its monstrous piles of stone seemed more ominous. Ranks of sculpted sentries, ever vigilant, surveyed the boulevard from the low roof-tops and dispatched riders in chariots pulled by tireless horses. Berlin was a city of shadows lurking behind gates, under perpetual surveillance by those who had never drawn breath.

  He entered the Café Bauer and looked around, relishing the mingled smells of coffee, cinnamon, and amaretto that lightened his mood. Suse had suggested the Romanische Café, but he had resisted. The Romanische was a hangout of artists in black clothes and garish makeup. The Café Bauer, on the other hand, was a fantasy of glass cases and mirrors, mahogany cabinets, crystal chandeliers, gold-faced clocks, and hand-painted vases. Gray-haired men and women in tweed conversed over pots of coffee, sturdy walking sticks propped against their chairs and small dogs on leashes curled beneath the marble tables. The Café Bauer would be a great consolation of old age.