Dohnanyi lowered the mainsail and they drifted, waves slapping the boat gently. Dietrich lit a cigarette and handed it on.
Hans said, “Can’t anything be done about your depressions?”
Dietrich was startled. He had expected a conversation about the political situation. He held the cigarette in one hand and covered his eyes with the other to keep out the sun. “Father says no. He doesn’t believe in Freudian therapy. Someday there’ll be a cure, he says; some kind of medication perhaps. In the meantime I endure my melancholies. Only—”
“Only what?”
“Only I don’t see how any medicine could cure spiritual sickness.”
“And is that what you’re suffering? Spiritual sickness?”
“It’s what we are all suffering. We display different symptoms, that’s all.”
A blue heron glided toward the stern rail, sensed it was not alone, and flapped off. The men were silent for a time, each lost in his own thoughts.
“Why do you ask?” Dietrich said suddenly.
“Hm?” Hans stirred. “Oh, about the depression? Because I’ve been mulling over your dilemma in my mind, and trying to find a solution.”
“My dilemma?”
“Very simple. War is coming. Nothing can stop it now. Hitler has acquired a taste of blood, like a young shark.”
“Who will be next?”
“The men in the know at the Abwehr say Poland. Very popular in Germany to beat up on Poles, and even better, their army is no match for ours. But if Hitler keeps going, someone will fight him. Stalin perhaps, or the British sooner or later, the goddamn fools.”
Dietrich wanted to ask about the British, but first reminded Hans, “And my dilemma?”
“There’ll be universal conscription. Soon. You’ve three choices, brother-in-law. Serve in the army. Follow Sabine out of the country. Or be arrested and likely shot.”
“And the latter option would not only be most unhealthy for me, but for your plotting friends as well. Not that they’re doing anything, are they?”
Hans didn’t rise to the bait. “I’ve had an idea. But I don’t know how you would respond. I could find you a position with me in the Abwehr. As a way of fulfilling your military service.”
Dietrich sat up. “Me? In military intelligence? My God, I’m no spy. Nor a soldier. I can’t even handle a weapon. Not that I want to.”
“And then there are your depressions,” Hans continued in an even voice, “which don’t at first glance seem to indicate mental toughness. Except I fancy myself a good judge of character. Unlike your father, who thinks you naive and lacking in common sense, I have a great deal of respect for both your judgment and your courage. You could be quite useful to us.”
“Useful to Hitler’s war effort?”
“You know that’s not what I’m about,” Hans said.
“What are you about?”
Dohnanyi rummaged around in a cabinet beneath the tiller, found a flask of brandy, and handed it to Dietrich, who unscrewed the cap and took a swallow.
“Oster has been in London,” Dohnanyi said. “Ostensibly to brief the German vice-consul, who is one of us. In fact, they were trying to get to Chamberlain. The stupid bastard wouldn’t meet with Oster. But we did get to Churchill and Vansittart in the House of Commons. Those are the hardliners in the Conservative Party. Oster convinced them of the seriousness of the plot, and in turn they begged Chamberlain to hold fast, to stand up to Hitler and threaten war if he went after the Czechs.” Dohnanyi took the flask of brandy from Dietrich, his voice rising as though he were hearing the story for the first time himself. “Do you know what Chamberlain’s people said? They told Churchill and Vansittart they couldn’t believe that German diplomats and officers would actually undermine their own government. Said if the plot was genuine, we were a bunch of traitors and not to be trusted. And that was that. The goddamn fools.”
Dietrich shook his head. “I know the type. Honorable English gentlemen. As bad as honorable Prussian gentlemen. So what has happened?”
“The plot is off, of course. My God, we had generals ready to call out their regiments, generals ready to arrest Hitler and Goering and Goebbels and Himmler. All waiting on the word from Chamberlain. And now all for naught.”
“Why? It’s not too late to stop Hitler without the British.”
“It is for the generals. They’re scared to death of public reaction. It’s one thing for them to arrest Hitler and claim they have saved Germany from a devastating war. Quite another thing to try to put the man in prison when everyone in Germany is exulting over the return of the Sudetenland and draping our soldiers with garlands of flowers and prostrating themselves at his feet. If Hitler were jailed now he would be freed in short order by a popular outcry and we would all be executed. Anyone who tried to kill him, even if he succeeded, would go down in German history as the worst sort of villain.”
“Well,” Dietrich said. “Perhaps someone must risk that.”
Dohnanyi gave a short, bitter laugh. “Yes, well, you can imagine the generals are standing in line ready to play that part.”
“And you?”
Dohnanyi stared at Dietrich. “And you?” he echoed.
Dietrich was the first to look away.
“Well then.” Hans stood and stretched, then raised the mainsail. At the tiller he turned and said, “Sabine was the first to go, and you must be next. There is no shame in that, just a plain statement of fact.”
They faced into the wind, and Dietrich squeezed his eyes shut, his cheeks wet with spray and tears.
“It is true I must go,” he said. “But before I do, there is one more who must be got out.”
The storefront in the Oranienburger Straße had been boarded with plywood and daubed with anti-Jewish graffiti. Dietrich peered through a crack and glimpsed the interior, dusty and bare save for a litter of paper and a single broken chair.
Next he rode the streetcar to Weißensee, found Elisabeth’s house, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. No one answered his knock. Then he noticed a new nameplate pasted onto the oak door. B. Zinn.
He stood a moment, gripping the wood rail of the stair, fighting down a wave of fear. Then he knocked on a doorway across the landing. A small gray-haired woman answered.
“Pardon me,” he said. “I’m looking for the young lady who used to live across from you. I—I used to know her, and as I was in the neighborhood I thought I’d say hello.”
“Well,” the woman said in a thin voice that could have quavered from either age or fear. “She doesn’t live here any longer.”
“Do you know where she’s gone?”
“No, she didn’t tell anyone. She left in a great hurry. You see—” The woman plucked at his sleeve, drew him closer, and lowered her voice. “I believe she had to leave because she was mixed up in something she shouldn’t have been. She was a Jewess, you know.”
“I see,” Dietrich said. He felt ill. “Can you tell me how long she’s been gone?”
“Not long. A month, perhaps. A man came and helped her pack. A Jew himself, by the look of him. That’s all I know, and more than I should say.” She shut her door.
Through Dohnanyi’s office, Dietrich learned that no one by the name of Elisabeth Hildebrandt had been allowed to emigrate. Then came Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when the windows of Jewish homes and stores across Germany were smashed, and Jews were dragged into the streets and shot and beaten. Thousands of Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Dietrich made one more attempt to find Elisabeth, inquiring among Jews he encountered on the street, but they were too frightened to talk to him. He wandered the Oranienburger Straße, past the ruins of the great synagogue which had burned on Kristallnacht, past street sweepers pushing shards of glass with their brooms, past more storefronts covered with plywood. He went every day for several weeks, but caught no sight of her.
Elisabeth had vanished into the Scheunenviertel.
…Jesu Christe
Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris.
Amen.
…Jesus Christ
With the Holy Spirit,
in the glory of God the Father.
Amen
(Double fugue)
New York
Summer 1939
THE HEAT AND HUMIDITY of Manhattan were already unbearable, though it was only the middle of June. New Yorkers seemed not to notice. Street venders tended their hot dog carts with shirtsleeves rolled to their armpits. Negroes with fluttering shirttails hawked newspapers on Broadway and long-legged girls lounged on Central Park benches in cotton dresses, eating ice creams.
But a German used to Berlin’s mild summers who felt naked if not properly dressed and would not dream of wandering the streets of the world’s largest city with jacket and tie off and shirtsleeves rolled like a navvy…
In his own room, it was another matter. At first Dietrich tried to remain fully clothed, afraid someone would knock and find him undressed. But he finally gave in, after letting it be known that he preferred not to be disturbed in the afternoons. His writing time, he said. And after the noon meal he would take a cold shower, then bolt the door and lounge in his undershorts. At first he felt foolish, but soon he could hardly wait for the meal to be done so he could slip away.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was living in the Prophets’ Chamber. In his own case the name was a bitter joke, he thought. Better to call it the Cowards’ Chamber. A large corner room on the second floor of Union Theological Seminary, it was reserved for the use of distinguished visiting lecturers. Thus the name, bestowed by students. A huge room, more chapel than bedchamber, with a twenty-foot-high ceiling and a bank of five Gothic windows at each end, one set facing inward to courtyard, chapel, and cloisters, the other overlooking the intersection of Broadway and 121st Street.
He had planned to begin a new volume of theological ethics, but he was not writing. He was not even preparing the lectures he was scheduled to deliver at Union’s late-summer term. He paced the length of the room into the night, filling up ashtrays, stopping now and then to jot random notes on loose sheets of paper. Lay sleepless on his bed. Read the notes he’d written the night before, crumpled the scraps of paper and tossed them in the wastebasket. Tried to pray and instead found himself facing the void.
His old professor Reinhold Niebuhr had been waiting on the dock when he stepped off the boat. Niebuhr embraced Dietrich, then stood back and looked his former student up and down. “Safe then,” he said with obvious satisfaction.
“Yes,” Dietrich agreed, and tried to smile. “Thanks to your very hard work.”
Niebuhr waved him off. “Baloney! Couldn’t let Adolf get his hands on you, could we?”
He relived the scene over and over. Strange to have felt no joy. Not even gratitude. He was certainly an ingrate, as he feared Niebuhr had come to view him. Though there were no accusations. Only a questioning look now and again.
“I seem to recall,” Niebuhr said once, when Dietrich sat in the refectory absentmindedly picking at a plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes, “that you aren’t too fond of American cooking.”
“Oh, you mustn’t think that,” Dietrich said, and blushed with embarrassment. “I am not particular about food. I am most grateful for it. It is the heat, that is all. It puts me off my appetite. Anyway, it wouldn’t hurt me to lose a few pounds.” He rambled on about nothing in particular while Niebuhr watched him again with the quizzical look but said nothing.
He had been fortunate to get out of Germany. Travel outside the Reich was more and more difficult, and his own passport was due to expire in a few months. There would be no possibility of renewing it when it did. Nor was it easy to gain entry into the United States. People were turned away every day (he thought guiltily of Jews trying to get to New York). His family had relied on all their contacts, and Niebuhr worked hard on his end to convince the Americans that Dietrich would find gainful employment when he arrived, that he was a specialist in his field whose scholarly work would reflect well on his new country. At last the visa had come through, just as he had received notice he was being conscripted into the German army. Hans von Dohnanyi had dealt with that, gaining an extension so that Dietrich might go abroad indefinitely to enhance Germany’s academic reputation. And if he was stranded in America after the start of the war which Dohnanyi expected to come within the next few months, well, what could be done about that?
On board the Bremen, Dietrich tried to read, stretched on a deck chair wearing a white skullcap to protect his balding scalp from sunburn. One of the crewmen had slowed down as he walked past and muttered, “Getting out, Jew scum? Taking the Reich’s money with you, I’ll bet.” Dietrich had started to protest, but the man had moved on.
He kept a letter from Sabine on top of his desk, and read it over and over.
So glad you are safely out of Germany, she wrote. My greatest fear has been the thought of what would befall you if the situation at home worsens. I know how you feel about fighting for Hitler, and what the consequences of refusal would be. There is no sense in your being caught up in something you have no hope of successfully opposing. Now I can sleep well at night. Please express my gratitude to Professor Dr. Niebuhr. Your loving twin, Sabine.
He read the note, then switched off his desk lamp and stood at the windows overlooking Broadway and facing the rise of 121st Street, a tunnel between buildings disappearing over the hill. It was three in the morning, and fog drifted in from the Hudson so that the melting gold of the streetlamps had begun to smudge the black night.
Seated in the cubbyhole of an office which held the seminary telephone, Dietrich managed to reach the exchange in Charleston, West Virginia. But an operator told him there was no telephone listed in the name of a Fred Bishop. He hung up and sat thinking a moment. It was no surprise if after eight years Fred had moved on. Perhaps he had gone home to Alabama after all to serve at his father’s church, or had landed the longed-for teaching position at Morehouse. But in that case wouldn’t someone at Union Seminary have heard?
He tried the Charleston exchange once more and asked for the First Baptist Church. On the fourth ring a deep voice answered, “First Baptist, Reverend Johns speaking.”
Dietrich hesitated, then said, “Pardon me, but I am Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Berlin, Germany. I am calling from the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. I was a friend of a pastor at the First Baptist Church named Fred Bishop. We were students together here in New York. Is it possible you would know how I might get in touch with him?”
It was the turn of the man on the other end to hesitate. Then he said, “Pastor Bonhoeffer? My name is Vernon Johns. There was a Fred Bishop at this church, yes. I took his place just before Christmas of 1931.”
“But that was only—” Dietrich stopped, trying to calculate the time.
“Reverend Bishop only served here a few months,” said Vernon Johns. “You say you were friends? Close friends?”
“I visited him in West Virginia when he first arrived there,” Dietrich said, suddenly dreading to continue the conversation. “Then I returned to Germany and have heard no more of him these past eight years.”
“I see. I’ll tell you what I know. But there’s also much I don’t know. Reverend Bishop was fired, sorry to say. There were rumors in the church that he was drinking, and then he spent one Saturday night in the bar of a local hotel. The next morning he showed up drunk in the pulpit. Very drunk, I’m told, although of course I wasn’t here.”
“My God,” Dietrich said.
“Yes. You know how Baptists are about drinking. He’d been pastor a little over three months and he was let go soon after. The elders started the search for a new minister and I was called in early December.”
“You don’t know where he went?”
The phone line crackled and the voice of Vernon Johns faded, then returned: “—what’s so strange. Nobody knows for sure where he went. The only story anyone heard comes from a fellow name o
f Earl Harvey. White people here in town call him Lightning because he can do all these fancy mathematical equations. But the poor fellow is touched in the head, you might say.”
“Yes,” Dietrich said. “I met Earl Harvey when I visited Charleston.”
“You did? Then you know he’s not what you might call a reliable witness. But if there’s any truth to Earl’s version of events, I hate to say it, but Reverend Bishop is probably dead.”
Dietrich sat slumped on a swivel chair, legs crossed and head bowed and telephone receiver pressed hard against his ear.
“With Earl,” Vernon Johns was saying, “you have to listen hard and then read between the lines. But since I’ve known him, he’s never changed his story where Fred Bishop is concerned. And he claims Reverend Bishop didn’t tell anyone else where he was going, that he was going to tell a local doctor but the doctor had just died of a heart attack. Reverend Bishop told Earl that First Baptist was no longer his church, that he had a new church. Earl says a tunnel they dug a few years back up at Hawks Nest was Reverend Bishop’s new church and that he went to preach to what Earl calls the skeletons there. He says Reverend Bishop went to be with the skeletons, that he went into the tunnel with the skeletons and never came out. That’s what Earl says. And if you act like you don’t believe it, he’ll say, ‘That Reverend Bishop he never was no preaching acting thing.’”
PRAYING PACING DRINKING SMOKING SWALLOWING SLEEPING PILLS PASSING OUT then again and again.
One day Dietrich can no longer stand the Prophets’ Chamber and goes out into the heat of Manhattan.
He does not wear coat or tie and his shirtsleeves are rolled to his armpits. He sits on a bus bound for Harlem hot as an oven and mops the sweat from his face with a grimy handkerchief.
At 138th Street he steps off and wanders for blocks, past a storefront church hidden behind an iron grille, past a Jamaican restaurant that smells of coriander and ginger and nutmeg. Studies the window of a shoe repair shop for a quarter of an hour as though it held the answer to the mystery of life.
Saints and Villains Page 32
