The Butterfly Plague

  We stood in the recess of tall windows, looking out at the terrace where we had been, and we drank sherry—a light, light gold in color. The glasses were crystal, with eagles cut so sharply that their claws were capable of piercing your fingers.

  Lissl said, “We will wait.”

  We waited.

  Presently, along the corridors we heard the echoes of iron steps and the battering of heels as someone approached, heralded by shouts of “Heil!” and by tones of subservience and deference.

  “Put down your glass,” said Lissl. “Do not look at him until he speaks.”

  I lowered my head. From the corner of my eye I saw that even she, not only a Countess and of equal rank but his wife and companion, bowed her head and dipped her body before him.

  I smelled him first. Black leather and silver polish. Cigarettes and a curious, extremely Germanic cologne. Also the male smell of warmth. His hand, as he raised me up from my curtsy, was strong and clean. I felt womanly—a rare experience, living with Bruno.

  “So you are my wife’s American friend,” he said.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  I looked.

  His bearing was Caesarean.

  His head was enormous and his hair, silver-blond, was brushed forward.

  The veins stood out at his temples.

  His mouth was wide and shaped for sexual appetites and it looked as though he had come directly from a feast.

  His gaze was brilliant. It hinted of miraculous kindness.

  But I knew better than to believe this. Character is in mouths, not in eyes, and I had seen his mouth first.

  We sat down.

  Lissl was silent.

  She watched him dutifully, like his dog. But I could tell that she loved him. Was trapped in this love.

  I thought, She and I have walked into the same Nightmare.

  Count von Buëll gave us a little of his attention. This consisted of polite remarks about my hopes of winning in the events and classes I was entered in. He had heard of me. He was interested in Bruno. He understood that Bruno had many original theories about the human body and its performance under duress. He said that the Fuhrer himself had expressed a desire to know these theories better and he informed me that Bruno was considered with high regard in certain circles.

  All this was news to me. I remained silent. During this conversation Lissl’s eyes rested on her food. She did not eat.

  Finally the Count rose.

  We rose with him.

  He had dined voraciously and well.

  He was totally masculine. Self-immersed.

  He wished me good fortune. He kissed the Countess’s wrist. He departed. Heat followed after him and the room shadowed and became cool.

  “Well!!!” I said. I whispered it.

  Lissl looked at me.

  “You understand?” she said. I told her that I understood.

  We walked arm in arm to the bathrooms. They were marble and spacious. There was a large table spread with linens, cosmetics, and brushes. Lissl seated herself and I stood behind her. I wrote, with lipstick on a piece of tissue, Are we alone? and she wrote back, No. She pointed to a ventilator over our heads.

  We stayed there a long time in silence, she sitting, me standing behind her, both of us facing into the mirror. She carefully brushed and combed and powdered her hair (yes, she powdered it, very lightly—blue). I did not show her that I was bald. She brushed some sort of lacquer on her lips so that they gleamed for a moment and then froze. I put on lipstick. She offered me perfume, but I declined to wear it for fear Bruno should ask me where I’d been. However, I put some on my handkerchief.

  She took my hand, which rested on her shoulder, and held it. She looked longingly at our reflections in the mirror. We were not as we had been. We closed our eyes, hoping together to open them on other images and other days, but we faltered in that dream and the world remained real.

  She wrote, Where did you get that star? and I wrote From Mr. Seuss in France, and she wrote, We do not carry stars, and I looked at her and then I wrote, We should.

  She looked at this and looked at me and nodded. Then she wrote, We cannot meet again. I nodded violently, meaning that we must, but she shook her head. Her eyes were sad.

  I could not take the time to write. I said it. “Why?”

  She thought for a moment and then stood up. She went into the lavatory and flushed our writings down the toilet.

  She came back. She had not answered me. She did not speak. She took me gently by the arm and led me out into the great hall.

  I realized that she had not answered me because one of her “followers” had been standing outside the bathroom. The door was ajar, and apart from being overheard through the ventilator, we had probably been watched from the hall.

  We got to the steps outside. The giant motorcar with its flags and drivers was waiting.

  She said, “Auf wiedersehen.”

  I smiled. I said it too. I knew she did not mean it. Could not, for some reason. I wanted to weep with frustration, leaving her there, not knowing what was going to become of her.

  She laughed. It was the last time.

  “You know,” she said, “your German is terrible, Ruth. You must work on your verbs. Begin again…” and then she stressed the next part oddly. “At the beginning.”

  I looked at her.

  The sun was in my eyes.

  She was dazzling.

  We kissed.

  I went down the steps.

  I did not look back just yet.

  I got into the car.

  I was driven away.

  At the end of the driveway, I looked back.

  She had gone inside.

  Begin at the beginning.

  On the way home I thought about this. The beginning. What is the beginning? I thought of her face, of her tone of voice. Of her hands. Of her husband. She had said, “Your German is terrible. Work at your verbs.”

  My verbs.

  The beginning.

  I thought of it.

  The Dark Angel driving the car turned to look at me. I was weeping. It did not matter what he thought of me. I had understood. This was her answer.

  The beginning of learning German.

  Sein.

  Ich bin.

  Du bist.

  Er ist.

  Wir sind.

  Ihr seid.

  Sie sind.

  This was her message.

  To be.

  I am.

  You are.

  He is.

  We are.

  You are.

  They are.

  And to this I added the word “good-bye.”

  I do not need to explain the history.

  At the Olympics I won three gold medals. I do not have them any more. Bruno has them. After all, they were his.

  I dressed always in the uniforms now. When I swam, my baldness startled people, but the more I won the more they got used to it.

  But I could not.

  I also had to endure another of Bruno’s innovations above and beyond the baldness. This was my breast truss.

  It was like a belt made of elastic and cotton. It pulled my breasts to either side as far toward the armpits as I could stand. I wore it under my suit. I had to slightly readapt my reach to accommodate it, but it flattened me and it worked. It was agony.

  These things did not matter. I was a guinea pig. I was alive and I could perform. Later, this became my career.

  Bruno’s face changed. His mouth stiffened. His nostrils flared more often. It became impossible to see into his eyes. He shaved his own head. He gained weight. He began to carry a riding crop. He donned boots. He wore leather. He bought a cap. Slowly he changed his language. He became German.

  On the last Olympic day of all, August 16th, 1936, Hitler was to speak to us. Each team was to parade before him. We all had to learn the salute.

  A drill master came. In uniform.

  We lined up in the underground tunnels. I was just a member of the
team. Bruno was absent. Above ground there was a tumult of bands and singers. I knew that all the flags would be flying. I knew the sky was blue. I felt old. I was sad.

  The drill master educated us in the art of saluting.

  As each captain of each team came abreast of the Fuhrer’s box, he was to “eyes-right.” At this moment, still looking ahead of us, we were to commence the count.

  One: Arm out to the side.

  Two: Eyes right.

  Three: Raise the arm, sighting along it on a slight diagonal.

  Heil!

  One. Two. Three. Heil!

  It was simple.

  Yes. The bands played, the flags flew, and we marched up onto that resplendent field, some of us with our medals, all of us in our Olympic blazers, all the nations of the world, obedient and shouting. This was the Master Leader. This was the Master Leader’s Fatherland. These were his people. We were there. We did it.

  As we passed the place where he stood and as we shouted our approval, my heart leaped into my throat. I thought I was stricken. There beside him, saluting too and smiling down, was Bruno. Standing with those others. Now, I was destined to know them.

  It had happened.

  Up there, also, was the Count von Buëll.

  And the Countess.

  And no one else I recognized.

  Hitler spoke.

  He spoke for two hours.

  He was faraway, partially hidden and small. But we heard him.

  And it grew dark as we stood there.

  For a time thereafter, Bruno forced me to travel with him, here and there, riding in official motorcars. We visited the doctors and scientists at Tubingen; ministers of physical education in various state capitals; teachers, physiologists, gymnasts. We visited sports centers, where I gave demonstrations of strength through joy. We called on Goering, Hess, Himmler, and Streicher. They voiced their approval. We were much in the company of Dr. Goebbels. Hanover, Leipzig, Bayreuth, Nuremburg, Regensburg, Augsburg, Munich, Saltzburg, Freiburg, Stuttgart, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Darmstadt, Frankfurt, Cologne, and always, always—home to Berlin.

  Home to Berlin.

  Nightmares begin with acts. Sometimes an act of Absolution. Sometimes an act of Atonement. The act will inevitably involve your integrity.

  I wanted to go home—really home—truly home, to America. But no. I was married. I was a wife. I stayed with my husband.

  I was his guinea pig.

  I was bald. Once a week he shaved my head.

  I wore his uniform. My picture was published.

  He designed swimming paraphernalia, breathing devices, eye goggles, webbed feet. I even wore strange fins on my forearms and rubber things strapped to my legs. My breasts became deformed. I got ill. I was sick. I had headaches, nausea, rashes, and torn muscles. I stood in the cold, I swam in ice, I stood against walls. It was all part of a plan. I was placed in snowbanks, nude. I was told to run, walk, lie down, stand up, sit, crouch, stoop, stop and start. I had orders constantly in my ears.

  Ointments and oils were spread on various parts of my anatomy. Greased with these, I was told to enter different sorts of water—distilled, salt, lake, and river. Temperatures were varied. I developed piles and chilblains.

  I swam by day and by night.

  I wanted to obey. I wanted to be obedient. I wanted to love and be loved. I wanted my husband. I did not know what had become of him. He seemed to be living in another world, and I tried with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul to join him there. I tried with all my body. I loved him.

  Acts of Absolution and Atonement.

  My ankles swelled. As though nails had been driven far up through my feet.

  And wherever we went there were my rows of dreamers. Only now they did not walk. Now they sat on benches, or they stood by walls. They were always in the shadows. Always silent.

  I received gifts. A gold watch from Himmler—a box at the opera from the Fuhrer—kid gloves and a leather bag from Julius Streicher—a compact from Goering—and a pill box. And flowers from Dr. Goebbels (he called them messages of admiration). Their wives and mistresses ignored me. I was denied the company of women. I began to hoard more and more the memories of home. My real home. America.

  Last spring—1938, either in May or very early in June (I don’t remember)—I was taken to give a demonstration. It was to be my last demonstration.

  We traveled at first by train and then by car. We were accompanied by several officers and by three men from the Ministry of Enlightenment and Information. On the train they all read books (one, I remember, was reading Vom Winde Verweht) and no one spoke. Bruno looked out of the window, and as I watched his profile, I tried to reconcile this man with the man I had wanted so badly to marry two years before.

  I’m not telling you everything, of course. A lot of it was private. But I can say that we had our moments of bliss and our moments of hell. That is, inside the private part of our marriage. There was the usual state of war which everyone has. But Bruno, for all his outward demeanor of leadership and strength, still had his “boy” moments. And during them, life was marvelous. He liked to be touched and to have the back of his head scratched and he could be an inventive, wonderful lover when he thought of me and himself and forgot what else was on his mind. In other words, what I am saying is that he remained human to me, as my husband. But as someone I lived with and knew and had once gone so far as to worship blindly, I could not see that I any longer recognized him.

  Our journey seemed to be a long one, but it took only from after breakfast to after lunch. At the station, wherever we were, a motorcade was waiting for us, and as we got into the cars, I heard several times the word “Kamp.” Also the word, “Kamp-Kommandant ” Also the phrase, “Es gibt keine Kamp-Krankenhaus.”

  I was almost amused by this. Any form of fetish amuses me, and I remember thinking, “Kamp” is their new word. Their fetish. Just as, for a long while, the word had been “Freude.” There had been Joy Houses and Joy Festivals and Joy Organizations. There had been Joy Commanders. Now it was camp. I wondered what they meant when they said there was no hospital. However, it did not occur to me for one minute it had anything to do with me.

  We drove along pleasant roads. We passed through villages and towns, and in them people waved. A troop of Jungenvolk halted to let us pass and they waved and shouted and heiled at the autocade. They loved our flags and they loved our uniforms and they loved the shape and size of our motorcars. They loved the fact that we had imposed upon them, disturbed their marching and their labors.

  We arrived.

  I was not really watching. I was tired. We passed through a woods. I was aware of that. It got dark. When we broke from the other side I was aware only of the cleared terrain and of young men singing as they cut down more trees.

  There was a sort of stockade. And there was wire fencing. Very high. And my first thought was: animals. All of this had something to do with animals. We had made this journey, come all this way, to see a zoo.

  And then I thought, It must be a strangely special zoo, and I wondered if they were secretly training some sort of animals for some sort of warfare. And I thought, That’s why they particularly mentioned the fact that there was no hospital, because of course, there should be a hospital wherever a large number of people are working with a large number of animals. With big animals, especially. Horses. Or perhaps elephants. I could not resist the thought of Hannibal and the Alps.

  I wondered what I had to do with all this—my demonstrations—and I thought, Well, I swim and they are probably working with whales, and got the giggles about this and as we passed through the gates I was laughing my head off and one of the officers turned to me and smiled and said, “You have a very sensible attitude, Frau Haddon,” and someone else laughed as well.

  And I saw them. Then.

  The rows.

  This is why they had disappeared.

  This is where they had gone.

  This is why there were gaps in the rows outside i
n Berlin, in Mannheim, and in Stuttgart.

  This is what had happened.

  Kamps.

  The motorcade stopped.

  We got out.

  We stared.

  Yes, even they stared.

  And Bruno stared.

  “Splendid,” he said.

  Splendid.

  There were several specimens to be looked at. Winter had passed. Experiments in cold air had been conducted.

  Now they wanted to try experiments in water temperatures. I was to show them how. It had something to do with how long one could endure the cold before one died.

  I looked at the specimens.

  The frost had devoured their toes and fingers. The officials, the scientists, and Bruno conferred about prevention. My own endurance was mentioned. Their heads shook and then they nodded.

  The specimens waited.

  I waited with them.

  I realized that I was one of them. I was their extension to the outside.

  But worse, I realized that whatever I could not endure, they would have to. I saw that when I had been pulled from my snowdrift and given blankets, they were left in theirs to freeze and die or to lose their extremities. They were left there because I had failed. And my failures frustrated the researchers. If I had only been able to go on—to freeze, perhaps—they would not have had to.

  It came to be time for my demonstration.

  I was to be placed in sea water. At its lowest temperature.

  I tried to smile.

  I was allowed a bathing suit.

  I climbed up to the top of the tank.

  The scientists, the officers, and the men from the Ministry of Enlightenment and Information watched me and prepared to take notes.

  The dreamers—the specimens—watched me.

  Frau Haddon was famous. They were told they were privileged to watch me.

  I became determined that they should watch me die.

  That last is not crazy. That is exactly what it was like.

  I got down into the water.

  They could all see me through the glass sides of the tank.

  At first it was cold.

  Then it was not cold.

  I moved as little as possible, treading water.