The Darkest Hour

by Roberta Kagan

  It surprised Father, the sound, and he said, “I think it is jazz music.”

  “You listen to that wicked music, Carl? You have sons …”

  “No, I don’t listen to it—I don’t know why it’s playing.”

  Grandfather pushed his chair away from the dining table forcefully and followed the music to the study. The sound caused a very different reaction in Grandfather. As the sound got louder and more pronounced, with each step he took toward the study his eyes squinted more and more. He looked as though anger and disgust were pulsating through his veins from the melody.

  Finally, Grandfather was standing over me as I danced with my eyes closed.

  He cleared his throat.

  I stopped dancing and looked up at Grandfather’s face. My joy evaporated.

  He walked past me and pulled the needle from the record—ending the beautiful notes. Silencing them.

  He shouted, “I never want to hear you listening to this music again. Do you hear me?”

  I said, “Grandfather, I …”

  “I thought you would say yes; in this case then I must ensure that you don’t …” He raised the record above his head.

  I cried, “No please, Grandfather, no please don’t.”

  He threw the record with great force of anger upon the marble floor and it broke into pieces.

  I ran to Grandfather and punched him in the chest.

  Father and Hans were standing at the entrance to the study watching.

  Grandfather hugged me hard.

  I said, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” through tears.

  Grandfather said, “I’d rather you hate me now and be respectable later. This music you are listening to is for niggers and kikes. I will not have my grandson run around acting like a crazy American nigger—this music is tricking you. It is made to make you become unhinged, like—like an animal. It is evil. You are not an animal like those that make this wretched sound. You are superior. You need to act like it. Do you understand?

  I said, “Yes, Grandfather.”

  Chapter 1

  Summer 1940, Long Island, New York

  CHARLIE

  I was drunk. So drunk that I didn’t notice what things were. I try to retrace my thoughts through the fog of the drunken stupor but when I do … just see a haze. A purple haze that runs through my mind concurrent with the desire to forget. I don’t want to remember.

  I was riding in the car with Jonny when I noticed him. It was just a silhouette at the time. A dark mass that was nothing more substantial than the fog that surrounded him. An apparition. It wasn’t real to me. I forgot that I had seen him immediately—he was like a singular pillar of smoke that blew away in the wind and then was no more.

  Jonny had just dropped me off in front of my house in Long Island. It was an expensive house in a classic, wealthy Long Island neighborhood. It was made of an off-white wooden shingle exterior with three perfectly separated dormer windows, that during the day lit the attic well. It had two stories and a deck on one side of the house, on the second floor, where you could walk outside.

  I soon found myself on that deck.

  I noticed upon walking up the brick steps to the black door, even though it was during the night, that I could see the void of blackness behind the door, indicating that it was ajar. I grabbed the gold handle and peered in. Mother would never leave the door unlocked, or open, in the middle of the night.

  I didn’t want to unsettle the quiet for fear of what I might find. But I had to. I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted so that anyone on the first floor, and maybe the second, could hear me.

  “Mother, are you ok? Mother!”

  The silence of the crickets chirping their summer pleasantries to each other was the only sound around me. It was louder than normal, more pronounced against what I perceived as ominous silence. I walked inside and flicked on the lights and noticed that the entire house was truly dark. I could only see the shadows of the balusters leading the way up the staircase. There was obviously no other light turned on in the entire house other than the singular bulb that I stood directly under. I now added fear to my feelings of discomfort and worry.

  I walked up the stairs and turned on the light as I did so, to illuminate my path.

  “Mom! It’s Charlie—where are you?”

  I came to the balcony on the second floor and noticed that a door was open. A certain kind of dread filled me like never before. I started to get tingles and knew something was wrong now—I no longer suspected it, I was sure of it. I walked outside and almost slipped from a liquid that was viscous. The light switch was on the other side of the deck—I relied on the moonlight to show me. To tell me that my mother was dead. I saw her lying on the deck with blood surrounding her and matting her hair. Her eyes were vacant. I ran to her, almost slipping on her blood, and cried and sobbed. I heaved for ten minutes; there was no point to rush to the phone—she was dead. No one could bring her back to life. As it turned out, I didn’t need to phone the police because the neighbors heard my cries and called.

  I remember a policeman tapped me on my shoulder and when I didn’t turn around, he said that I’d better or he would shoot me. I glanced back and saw him and another cop pointing guns at me.

  I kissed my mother on the forehead and got up—putting my hands in the air. They patted me down and then led me downstairs—allowing me to wipe up with a towel before questioning me. Very soon after, another policeman arrived and said that they had caught the killer. He was a vagrant wandering about the neighborhood with blood on his hands. He had jewelry, which the police wanted me to identify. I did—I said it was hers.

  “I saw him—he was just here—must have been as I pulled up to the house. He was shuffling outside as if in a daze.”

  “Probably a drug maniac. We will teach him a lesson on the way to the station. We have a field we take people who hurt women to. He will go to the chair, son.”

  The police officer who first talked to me said this as he laid a hand on my shoulder, as if this could comfort me, as I looked at the ground.

  “Do you think you would recognize him, could you ID him?”

  “I don’t want to see him,” I said, “he was just a dark figure. I don’t think so.”

  “Well, son, we have all we need to proceed initially, anyway. Why don’t you go into your living room while we take out the body; we have collected all the evidence we need.”

  I was too tired to be sad and too emotionally exhausted to be anything but numb. I went to the living room and sat on the couch, with blood still covering me. I fell asleep.

  Chapter 2

  Mother was a ballroom dancer, and a stage actress. A famous stage actress in New York City circles—she was in all the hit musicals and had danced since vaudeville days.

  She had taught me to dance well, and to play the piano.

  So, we were dancing together as a scratched record began to go faster and faster. I couldn’t keep up.

  Mother was almost never cross, but a deeper voice, that sounded like the scratchy record, came out of her mouth, “Charlie, move faster, one-two count, one-fucking-two count, you bastard.”

  “Mother, I am sorry, I—I am moving as fast as I can. What is wrong? Oh God, Mother.”

  Blood started to stream down her temples in rivulets. I stopped dancing, and the music was a high-pitched scream. The song, it screamed at me—“heaven, she’s in heaven.”

  Then mother screamed.

  “Oh, it hurts—it hurts!” She grabbed her head.

  The lights turned low—“heaven, she’s in heaven” it proclaimed this time, skipping over and over again—“heaven, she’s in heaven” as she fell to the floor. Blood flowing as if from a faucet out of her nose, as her skin became paler. She started twitching, and I went to her side.

  She knelt on the floor, her blue eyes now white—the color washed away.

  I put my hand behind her back and she went limp.

  I woke up.

  But there was no on
e in the room. My mother wasn’t here. Her body was in a morgue across town. It was because of me that she was there—I shouldn’t have gone out swing dancing with Jonny. I should have stayed home and protected her.

  I went back to sleep that night crying and woke up to my aunt at the foot of my bed.

  She yelled, “Charlie, wake up! You don’t want to be late for your long vacation.”

  “What, what?”

  “Your vacation, oh it is going to be a wonderful trip. I have bought you the cheapest ticket to your new home in Germany.”

  “Mother hasn’t even been buried yet and you are trying to send me away?”

  “Oh, I am not trying—I am your legal guardian via your mother’s will. As your Father is dead, I have phoned your father’s brother, and he is going to take you in. At least you won’t be homeless. It is a gift, really it is, because if you lived with me I would make sure that your life would be a living hell. I cannot stand to look at you. I am ambivalent about your mother’s death—I can only wish you had followed her to an early grave.”

  “You cannot make me go. I am sixteen years old and I am not listening to you. I have never liked you. I am staying here.”

  “Have it your way then—you can try to stay, and I will have the police escort you by force to your ship to Germany.”

  I was hesitant to commit to her demands, but I knew she was right in saying that she was my guardian. Mother had mentioned putting it in her will.

  “I know Mother owns this house and has …”

  “Money in the bank. Yes, money that I have withdrawn for your ‘trust.’”

  “Then you are sending it to my Uncle on my behalf?” I asked expectantly.

  “No, thankfully your mother said that it was in my discretion as to how to use it and that means you won’t see one red cent.”

  “That is illegal, you cannot do that,” I replied with a smirk.

  I was no lawyer, but I knew that the money had to be used for my benefit.

  “I have checked with an attorney, don’t worry. As it is in my discretion how to use it to care for you—I will send a small amount of money, very small, to make sure to follow the letter of the law. However, the bulk of it will be used by me and for me, so that I can best care for you if you should return. But you won’t. You don’t deserve the money, and neither did your mother. I only pretended to love her. She paid my bills. But the fact that she received the bulk of our Father’s fortune will now be remedied and fairly distributed to me.”

  “You better get up, Charlie, your ship leaves in an hour.”

  Chapter 3

  Summer, 1940, Regensburg, Germany

  Upon arriving in Germany, I took a taxi to my Uncle’s house. But, my Uncle didn’t live in a house, he lived in a mansion. It wasn’t a “normal” mansion, as a horrible camp surrounded it. The taxi dropped me off, and I carried one suitcase and my record player up to the compound’s gates. These were my only worldly possessions and the record player was the one that my mother had given me for my sixteenth birthday.

  The gates were made of wrought iron, and were guarded by two men with machine guns. I felt very unsettled as I approached a man sitting at a desk, positioned in the middle of the half-open gates. Dressed in a Schutzstaffel soldier’s uniform, he resembled a clerical worker, with spectacles that kept sliding down the bridge of his nose. He looked up at me—glaring at me as he pushed the spectacles back up onto his face. His beady eyes looked me up and down.

  He then asked, “Are you Jewish?”

  “No, I am not, and what kind of question is that, anyway?”

  He lost his clerical appearance as he stood up and looked down on me.

  “Well, you look like a fucking British pansy with that long hair of yours and your Anglophile zoot suit. I need to see your papers.”

  I nervously obliged, taking out my paperwork and handing it to him.

  Upon examining it, he said, “So, you are an American?”

  “Yes, I am and …”

  “That explains your insolence. Your country is full of Jews and Jew lovers. Why are you at my gate?”

  “Because I live here. I …”

  He lost any resemblance to his previously innocuous demeanor.

  “Then you have been lying to me and you are a Jew. An American Jew, even better. I will teach you a lesson, you fucking son-of-a-bitch.”

  He started to approach me swiftly, leaving his perch behind the desk.

  “No, I am not Jewish. I am Erich Beck’s nephew. I was told he lives here.”

  He halted, and looked at the papers in his hand, “Beck. Charles Beck,” he said vapidly.

  “Yes, yes, that’s right—and Erich Beck is my Uncle.”

  His eyes showed his thoughts, his anger transforming into wide-eyed fear.

  “I am so sorry, sir, I hope that you can forgive me. I, I didn’t know who you were. May I have the privilege of escorting you to Obergruppenführer Beck?”

  “You mean my Uncle?”

  “Yes, your Uncle. May I carry your bags for you?”

  I wasn’t angry at him. I was shocked at the entire situation. I didn’t understand the preoccupation with being Jewish or not. I knew the Nazis disliked Jews, but I hadn’t realized their hatred ran so deep.

  He led the way into the compound and I immediately smelled a stench. It smelled of dirt, sweat and desperation.

  I saw the Jewish residents all around me with Stars of David stitched to their clothing. They were working or milling about, looking nervous—and as we passed, they all looked at the ground, averting their eyes from us.

  One man did look me in the face. He was the only one, and I remember him because he had a cleft palate. He looked at me with absolute hatred; I looked nervously up at the SS guard, who led the way. I instinctively knew the rules of the place and was worried for the man. What if the guard noticed him staring at us, what would he do to him?

  But the guard didn’t notice and kept leading the way during a several-minute walk past the open yard and the old decrepit buildings to our right. He led me to this grand house—this mansion that stood on a hill overlooking the miserable place. The guard opened a door and motioned for me to go ahead of him. He followed behind and closed the doors, locking them, and I wondered whether he was locking people out or locking me in.

  He then led me down a narrow hallway to a door that opened into a ballroom of sorts.

  “Where are we going? Where is my Uncle?”

  “He will be down momentarily.”

  “What, you haven’t even called him and I am to wait in this ballroom?”

  It was strange to me, to be told to wait in this ballroom with a piano covered with a much-needed dust sheet because of disuse. The room was dark and looked deserted. This whole compound was disturbing, and this ballroom was creepy. I knew ballrooms, and they were supposed to be bright, well-lit and beautiful places.

  The SS guard said, “He said when his nephew came that he wanted to meet him here.” He shrugged. “Look, please stay here and I will let him know you have arrived.”

  I obeyed. I looked around me and noticed behind the stacked chairs that there was a light switch. I went over and flicked on the light, which immediately sent an electronic humming light across the entirety of my vision. It halted the onslaught of gray light that had previously been inhabiting the room with gloom.

  The place didn’t look so bad to me anymore. Now it instantly reminded me of Mother and dancing and music. I went over to the piano and took off the sheet covering it—throwing it on the floor. I wiped the seat clean of dust with my hand and then roughly rubbed my hands together to clean them. I sat down at the piano and opened the fallboard to expose the keys. I threaded my hands together and cracked my knuckles. I wanted to play, I ached for it and the song that I intended to play was making the pads of my fingers sensitive with anticipation. I placed my fingers on the correct keys without thinking—about to play the first note.

  “Charles, how have you been, my boy?” someo
ne said, speaking English to me for the first time.

  I looked up and saw my Uncle in his fancy uniform. He was obviously a high-ranking official with his collar badges and other trinkets that adorned his uniform. He had a smile across his face that seemed genuine. I didn’t know him at all, I had never met him.

  “Charlie, I go by Charlie,” I said in German; I spoke it fluently.

  “Ok, Charlie it is then. Charlie, welcome to my home. I am impressed that you speak some German.”

  “I speak it rather fluently, my mother made sure because, because of my heritage—that I knew it and was tutored in it. Anyway, thanks for taking me in.”

  “Say not a thing about it. You are my nephew even if I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know you. If anything, this will allow me some time to do that before you go off to university.”

  “Yeah, I guess Mother’s death will allow us that time,” I said, testing his friendly demeanor, probing for some sympathy.

  “Well, I wasn’t happy to hear of your mother’s death,” he said with a Cheshire cat-like grin.

  “We haven’t seen each other for many years and even then it was for such a short time. I won’t lie to you and tell you I grieve her—but I am certain you do and I am sorry for that. Any untimely death really is sad.” His cat-like grin evaporated into a stern face.

  His words were, if not sensitively kind, at least respectful. But when his grin left his face, I saw a cold glare in his eyes that showed they were made of steel, there was a lack of warmth. That coldness gave me slight shivers down my chest and arms. I didn’t like him and I had only just met him. I was trying to figure out what game he was playing. Why the warm words if his face was going to extinguish any warmth conveyed by them? What could be the purpose? I was contemplating that when he encouraged me to play a song.

  “Charlie, play something for your Uncle, hmm? You were just about to play when I interrupted you and I am sorry for that because I really would enjoy hearing you play a song. You see, I am a great lover of music and have an appreciation for …”