Danzig Passage Page 10

  “Teach those pigs a lesson.”

  A wave of fury washed over Karl. He wanted to shake them, to shout at them. Nazi law made it illegal for Aryans to have physical relations with Jews, but the rape of a Jewish woman was permitted, condoned, even admired.

  Karl felt his face flush with shame and anger. He ducked his head and walked even faster, turning down the side street where the Kalner family lived.

  He moved into the shadow of a shop entrance and looked up for the white Hebrew lettering required by all Jewish shops. He had managed to duck into the doorway of an Aryan shop. Breathing a sigh of relief, he took a moment to think, to study the window shades of Dr. Richard Kalner’s apartment. No movement. No light. The place looked vacant from the street. Karl wondered if they were there. Had they sat in the dark and let the telephone ring in their fear that the Gestapo would be calling to check on Richard’s whereabouts? Karl frowned at the thought. He wished they had foreseen this. That they had devised some sort of telephone signal in the event of just such a night. But then, who could have imagined this?

  The shrieks of Jewish victims echoed up the dark street. There was not much time. Karl stepped from the shadows and half jogged across the street to the three-story apartment building. He looked to the right and the left. The Nazis, preoccupied with the beating and arresting of a father and son, did not look up. Haberdashers. Karl knew them. He had purchased his hat at their store. He touched his fingers to the hat brim in a gesture of futility and frustration. Another ten minutes and the Nazis would be here, breaking down this front door, beating Richard and Jacob, and doing whatever they pleased to Leona Kalner.

  Karl charged through the door. He considered the elevator but did not want to wait. Taking the stairs two at a time, he reached the third-floor apartment in a matter of seconds. He stood panting for a moment, then knocked softly. He waited. There was no light under the door. Two newspapers lay outside the threshold. Perhaps the Kalners really had left town.

  “Richard,” he whispered hoarsely. “Richard. Leona. It is Pastor Karl. Are you there?”

  Ten seconds passed. There was no response. He raised his hand to knock again. Then the door opened, and the dark silhouette of Richard Kalner appeared, half concealed by the door. His long arm reached out and grasped Karl by the lapel of his heavy coat, pulling him in and quickly shutting the door behind him.

  “Pastor Karl!” Leona was weeping softly.

  “What are you doing here?” Richard sounded angry.

  Karl rubbed a hand over his face. Relief and fear flooded him. He had hoped there would be nothing more to do than return to the church and report that they had slipped away.

  “Get your things. No—” he stammered—“no. Best you don’t bring anything more than a toothbrush. Thank God you are all right. They’re coming. We have a few minutes at most. Come on!”

  “We decided not to go to the church,” Leona said in the dark. She did not get up from the couch.

  “You are in enough trouble already.” Richard’s voice sounded near to tears. He had not let go of Karl’s coat. “Now get out of here, Karl!”

  “Not without you. No time to discuss it. Where are the boys?”

  “We aren’t going,” Richard said firmly. “Get out of here. If they are coming and they find you here—” He did not finish the thought.

  “A dozen are already at the church. I cannot be in any more trouble than I am already—unless I let you face this alone. Then I will have the Lord to answer to.”

  “He is more merciful than the Nazis,” Richard said. “Now go back.”

  “You have five minutes,” Karl insisted, breaking free of Richard’s grip. “Get the boys. I am not going back without you.”

  They stood in the dark surrounded by silence, except for the approaching sounds of breaking glass and screams and shouts of exultation.

  Leona stood. “Richard?” she pleaded.

  “I am not like the others at the church,” Richard said. “I am a political. Once a member of the Reichstag. Already I have been arrested. This time they will not let me off so easy, Karl. You do not want me at the church.”

  Karl turned to Leona. She seemed fragile in the half light. “Get the boys, Leona,” Karl ordered. “There is no more time for discussion.”

  She obeyed him, as if she had been waiting and praying for someone to come for them.

  Richard also appeared relieved. “Take them, then. But I must stay here. I am a danger to whoever helps me.” He shrugged. “I had already instructed Jacob and Mark to go to you if the Gestapo came.”

  “I can hide you, Richard.” Karl ran a list of places through his mind as Leona called to her sleeping sons in the attic. “For Leona’s sake, Richard. For my sake. We need to try until we can find some way to get you out of this.”

  The violence in the street grew more insistent; there could be no question that the men were coming here. Yes. Dr. Richard Kalner was on their list.

  Sleepy voices echoed from the attic crawl space.

  “What?”

  “What is it, Mama?”

  “Is it over?”

  “Come down,” Leona instructed calmly. “We are going to New Church. Pastor Karl has come for us.”

  “Papa too?” Marcus asked.

  “Papa too,” said Leona.

  Richard moaned softly at that, then nodded. “All right.” He ran his hand through his hair and gathered up their coats. “Dear God . . . Karl.”

  At that moment there came the explosion of shattering glass directly below. Then a stone smashed through the window. Leona gave a little cry.

  “No! Oh, no!” And then, “Jacob! Mark! The Gestapo!”

  Karl grabbed Richard’s hand and checked the bolt on the door.

  Wordlessly the two men moved into the bedroom to stand beside Leona. She wept and trembled silently. Richard put his arms around her. She buried her face against him as shouts and obscenities followed still more stones through the window.

  “We know you are in there! Hey, Jew-pig! Richard Kalner! We know you are there!”

  The thump of jackboots sounded against the stairs. They were taking the steps two at a time, just as Karl had. An instant later their fists and crowbars hammered against the thin wood of the apartment door.

  ***

  Shouts and curses resounded from below. Jacob slammed his hand against the latch and thrust back the skylight. A shower of ash and soot descended through the opening as he hefted Mark up and then pulled himself out onto the slick slate roof.

  Carefully he lowered the window back into place, shutting off the sound of blows and the cries of his mother. Mark was crying. Tears streaked the dust on his face. Again and again he called first for his mother and then his father as Jacob dragged him away along the ridgeline of the steep roof.

  In the streets the voices of a thousand tormentors and victims covered the boy’s cries. His small agony was lost beneath the howling of the night. Jacob did not try to quiet his little brother. He simply held tightly to his arm and propelled him away. From one building to the next, jumping over the narrow gaps, sliding down one roof and creeping up another. Always he moved toward the dark streets, the quiet streets, where they had not yet come.

  In the distance he could see the illuminated stone figures atop the Brandenburg Gate. A block from there he could make out the Storm Troopers beating people outside the gates of the British Embassy. Tiny human figures in the streets below cringed beneath the blows and fell onto the glass-strewn sidewalks.

  “Why don’t they fight back?” Jacob cried in rage and frustration. He dragged Mark into the shadow of a chimney. Holding tightly to his brother, Jacob leaned against the warm brick and tried to think what they must do next. He peered cautiously around the corner of their hiding place. No one had followed them. For the moment they were safe, but how would they get down? Which would be the safest route to New Church? Throughout the city he could see the orange glow of fires. Yet some streets were still dark, sleeping on as if nothing w
ere happening, as if hell itself had not come to earth.

  Smoke lay thick across the rooftops. Jacob’s eyes burned and watered.

  “They were hurting Mama, Max!” Mark sobbed. “They hurt her! I want to go back! I want to . . .” His breath came in short spasms of anguish as he replayed the scene.

  “I have to think!” Jacob shouted, feeling the crushing weight of responsibility and fear. He had not imagined that it would come to this. Now he was truly in charge. His brother’s safety depended on him. He stared, transfixed, at the leaping flames of the dying synagogue. He had never been in the building before, and yet those flames singed his heart. He clenched his fists, again wishing that he could stand and fight them. But he could not. He must run and hide for Mark’s sake, for the sake of the promise he had made to Papa.

  “What will we do?” Mark cried. “Oh, Max! What will we do?”

  In reply Jacob removed his belt and made a loop that he fastened around Mark’s wrist. He then tied the other end around his own wrist, cuffing them to each other.

  He put his big hand on Mark’s shoulder. ‘First you must stop crying,” he said firmly. “We must go down to the street.”

  “No!” Mark shook his head in terror.

  “Listen to me!” Jacob cuffed him impatiently. “We must go down. If we stay here they will see us and know that we are Jews. They will shoot at us.”

  “In the streets they will catch us! Please, Max!” Mark crouched lower against the bricks as if he wanted to disappear into the chimney.

  “We are going down. Going to New Church. If you cry, they will see your tears and they will know. You must not cry, Mark! Do you hear me?”

  This did not stop the flow of tears. “But they have got Mama and Papa, and they will come for us at New Church, too!”

  “Then we will fight them at New Church! But we must go down. We must get to the street and walk through them. You cannot cry! They will beat you if they see you are frightened. They will know what we are!” He removed his handkerchief and gruffly wiped the tears and soot from the cheeks of his brother. “We cannot be babies,” Jacob warned. “Tonight we must be brave!” He said the words convincingly, although he did not feel very brave. Mark wiped his nose on his sleeve. He tried to smile, but his eyes betrayed his misery. He nodded. He would not cry in front of the Nazis. He must not!

  Jacob patted him gently and pointed toward the dormer window leading to the attic of the Thieste office building. Perhaps the window was unlocked. They could get off the roof and sneak down the stairs.

  The drone of an airplane engine passed overhead as the boys crept along the ridge of the roof. Jacob looked up, resenting and envying the freedom of flight. For an instant he wondered what it would be like to launch himself and Mark from the steep roof, to fly free for a few seconds and then be free forever! The thought made him pause and peer out over the edge.

  “What is it?” Mark cried in alarm, as if he could see the terrible thought pass through Jacob’s mind.

  Jacob looked up at the blinking lights of the plane that passed far above the smoke and the terror of the German revenge. He watched the plane as it circled and passed over the city once again. Then Jacob shook himself free of the force that urged him to fly away forever.

  Without answering Mark, he crept forward again, straddling the roof, bracing himself on the slick shingles lest he slip and take his brother over the edge with him.

  ***

  Great plumes of illuminated smoke rose in the night sky over the city of Berlin. The British transport plane circled back over the city for one last astonished look after takeoff.

  Theo Lindheim rubbed a hand across the stubble of his unshaven face as he gazed wearily down on the city that had once been his home, the nation he had loved.

  In some quarters shone the even lines of streetlamps; the calm of a city asleep. But, in other neighborhoods, different, brighter lights glowed. A group of small sparks rushed together in the center of one street before dispersing again. On another corner the sparks merged to transform a building, a shop, a synagogue, into a brilliant orange and yellow flower that grew upward into the night sky.

  The facades of Protestant churches and Catholic cathedrals were illuminated by the raging infernos that consumed the great synagogues of Berlin.

  Theo pressed his forehead against the glass of the windowpane and watched the blossoming fires. There were far too many to count. The meaning of Hermann Göring’s warning became clear.

  “That is you, burning out there, Theo Lindheim. All your thoughts. Everything you are. See how the flames of our fury consume you. And you are dying there.”

  Surely this night was the death of all hope that reason might prevail in Germany. The words shrieked by Hitler now took human form: “Juden! Verrecken! Jews perish!”

  Theo Lindheim was the messenger Göring had chosen to tell the Jews of the world: “You blacken and shrivel and perish! Take word of your death back to England! Tell them you have witnessed the death of your God and yourself tonight!”

  Was he to carry the message that there was no hope, no justice? Was he to cry to an unhearing world, to live his last days in the knowledge that the nations had turned silently away while millions died?

  The sorrow of such a task was almost more than Theo could bear. A physical pain clutched his heart, and silently he cried out to God for some other answer.

  Berlin dropped to the horizon behind the retreating airplane. Other glowing cities appeared out of the darkness. Another and another and still more.

  What do you see, Theo?

  Theo turned to answer, startled to find that the others on the plane were sleeping soundly.

  What do you see? The voice was clear, nearly audible above the drone of the engines. Theo knew the voice well; he had heard it speak before in other dark hours.

  Theo studied the chaos below and answered in a whisper, “Destruction, fire, division—the death of justice and mercy.”

  They have turned from my truth and from my people. All the things they do to others will come upon them and their children. The voice was not angry, but filled with sadness and certainty of what was to come to the people of Germany.

  Grief struck deep in Theo’s heart. Germany had, after all, been his home. “But not forever, Lord,” he pleaded.

  Tell me the date, Theo. The voice spoke gently.

  For a moment Theo could not remember times or dates, as though years meant nothing and time did not exist. Was he sleeping like the others on the plane? Was this a dream? “November,” he replied haltingly. “November 9, 1938.”

  Remember the date. From this night there will be fifty years of judgment; then they will remember this night and all their sins. For one year they will pray and repent, and after that will come a day of jubilee when I will break down the walls. Many will call upon my name, and I will answer. I will forgive.

  Theo leaned his cheek against the cool windowpane and looked down over Germany. The entire horizon seemed to be in flames, hours before the light of dawn.

  Fifty years? For Theo that meant an entire lifetime. He would not live to see the fulfillment of that hope. And how many others would vanish between this terrible night and the promised night in a far-distant future?

  “But what should we do now?” Theo asked imploringly.

  No answer came; only the monotonous drone of the engines as the plane slid toward the borders of the Third Reich.

  8

  No Quiet Place

  Armed only with a child’s crayon and a piece of paper, Captain Samuel Orde made his frontal attack on the terrorists hiding in the Arab villages beyond Hanita.

  PLEASE IDENTIFY ATTACHED CORPSE KILLED DURING TERRORIST ACTIVITIES AGAINST HANITA.

  SIGNED, SAMUEL ORDE, CAPTAIN

  BRITISH COMMAND, HANITA

  He pinned the note onto the coat of the dead man and glared at the men who gathered around him.

  “This”—he pointed to the body—“is the reason I will not take the atheists alon
g on any sortie against the enemy. Look at him!” He seemed angry. “This could be you. His body is dust. His immortal soul now regrets the wickedness of his life!” He glared at Moshe and then at each observer in turn. “Think about it.”

  The men of Hanita exchanged astonished looks. Samuel Orde preached with the zeal of a prophet in the wilderness. Some were angered by his boldness, but most were simply surprised.

  Orde opened the trunk of his staff car and spread out a canvas tarp. With a jerk of his thumb, he instructed the four men chosen for tonight’s action to load the body into the car. He bowed his head and prayed for the family of the fallen enemy and for the safety of the coming mission, but not for the dead Arab. It was too late to pray for him.

  With a resounding Amen, echoed by a handful of the uneasy men, Orde issued a Webley revolver to each of the four troopers. This astounded those who watched and envied the lucky few who were privileged to carry such a weapon. Orde presented one bullet per gun to his troops and ordered them into the car. Without explanation, he sped off down the road toward the village.

  Moshe watched and waited at the gate with the others as the red taillights grew small and then disappeared behind a cloud of dust.

  No one spoke. They stood with arms crossed over their chests and stared off into the darkness, listening and hoping, and considering the eccentric English soldier who thumped his Bible with one hand and his enemies with the other. Definitely odd.

  Fifteen minutes passed. Zach consulted his watch. “They should be near the village now.”

  “The question is not where, but why,” another remarked.

  “Four bullets,” added another puzzled voice.

  Moshe started to remark that it was not so very far from this place that Gideon had routed the enemy using only clay pots and trumpets, but at that moment, a distant shot rang out. Then another and another echoed from the hills and wadis until it sounded like a hundred guns firing at once.