Vienna Prelude

  He moved toward her, his arms stretched out to comfort. “I’m sorry.” Thomas began to weep with Elisa as her tears pushed past the barrier of control.

  She fell into his arms and let him hold her as she cried for the death of all hope, for the haunting echo of the challenge: “What God has done is rightly done.” How could this be right? How could she accept this? How could she carry news of such tragedy back to her mother? “Oh, Papa!” she sobbed. “Papa!” Now they would have to grieve again. They had given up hope before, only to have it offered to them once again. Cruel, cruel hope! Pulled away, wrenched from their hearts in some cosmic cat-and-mouse game! How could she keep her promise to believe in the face of such heartache?

  “Poor Elisa.” Thomas stroked her hair softly and kissed the cheeks that were wet with tears. “Poor, poor, darling . . .”

  She leaned against his chest and let him hold her. Then he picked her up and carried her to the sofa where he cradled her in his arms as if she were a small girl with a broken toy.

  She wept for a long time until finally she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder. She was glad he was there, glad she was not alone on such a dark and terrible night.

  ***

  A soft rain had begun to fall by the time Murphy reached the hotel. He opened the umbrella he had purchased at the concert and stood dumbly in the middle of the sidewalk as people hurried by him seeking shelter in the building.

  “Why was she still there tonight?” Murphy muttered to himself, turning back toward the opera house. “And no wedding ring. Maybe she just told me all that . . . about some other guy . . . because she—” He could not finish the thought. There was, after all, no reason for Elisa to lie about something like that unless . . . unless she just wanted to get rid of Murphy. But if that was the case, then why did she kiss him like that? And why take him to the little cellar joint with the guitar-playing Spaniard?

  He turned back toward the entrance of the Sacher Hotel. But he could not make himself move toward its warmth and comfort. He had to see her, had to talk to her. By now she would be home.

  Automatically Murphy raised his arm and hailed a passing taxi. Within ten minutes he stood outside the building where she lived and stared up at the drawn shades. A sliver of light escaped from them. Elisa was still awake!

  He smiled and let the raindrops hit his face as he watched a shadow move across the shade . . . her shadow! And then another shadow moved toward her! Their arms reached out. Murphy felt suddenly foolish as the two shadows melted into one long embrace.

  Murphy had the urge to hurl the folded umbrella at the window like a javelin. But he did not. He wanted to slam his fist against the hard cold stone of her building and call her a thousand foul names, but he did not. He knew a man who had broken his hand just that way, and then the boyfriend had come outside and beaten him senseless for such language. No, Murphy was beaten badly enough already. At this moment, Joe Louis himself could not have punched him harder or knocked him down any more completely than the image of the shadow boxing going on upstairs.

  He wiped the rain off his face as the large shadow scooped up Elisa and carried her away. “Oh, God,” Murphy breathed at last as emptiness consumed him.

  There were no taxis. He was drenched. Numb and cold, he walked through the puddle sidewalks and never thought to open the umbrella. He was sick before he reached his room at the Sacher Hotel; he flung himself onto the delicate petit point chair without changing his wet clothes. He just didn’t care.

  In one final gesture of despair, he took out the little wooden angel from his pocket, threw it on the floor, and slammed his heel down hard on it. It splintered into a thousand pieces.

  “So much for love,” he muttered, wishing he had a drink. “So much for you, John Murphy.”

  ***

  Soon Professor Julius Stern’s rags hung on the old man’s skeletal frame just like the stripes on all the other prisoners. He seemed tiny and fragile without his bulk. Theo had watched the old man’s flesh melt away as they scrambled in the rocks each day. But the old man’s mind grew sharper as the grief of his fate somehow dulled. The guard’s command for Theo to watch over the old man had developed into an inseparable friendship that flourished and grew and kept the two men known as Stern alive. Each night they sat awake and whispered to one another snatches from books that they both loved. They would discuss a passage until exhaustion pulled them into a numb and dreamless sleep. For Theo, the arrival of Julius Stern had meant the saving of his sanity. It became more obvious, however, that for the old man, his time in Dachau would mean death unless something happened very soon.

  The lights had been extinguished for an hour. An almost total silence had fallen over the packed barracks. Prisoners clung to their precious few hours of sleep. In these moments they could forget the horror that daylight would bring. Only Theo and the old man still lay awake.

  “You took Goethe’s Faust with you, Jacob?” the professor asked. “Why Goethe?”

  “It is the finest . . . the best written of all the stories about Faust.” Theo replied, hoping that his comment would stir up an argument between them. Such discussions kept their blood flowing and their minds awake. Tomorrow on the rocks they would think of what they said tonight, and such thoughts would dim their awareness of the cruelty around them.

  “Yes. Perhaps in the German language, Goethe’s Faust is the best,” the old man conceded, and Theo was disappointed at the ease with which he had won the argument. “But,” the professor added, “have you never read the Faust tragedy written by Marlowe?”

  Theo could have cheered. The old man had not failed to find some comparison, some controversy. Keep the mind sharp! Remember that we are men, not animals in a cage! “It can hardly come up to Goethe’s Faust!” Theo scoffed. “The comedy, the wit, the moral lesson—”

  The professor was silent for a time, and Theo was afraid that he had drifted off to sleep. Then he spoke. “Perhaps before Hitler, I would have agreed with you. As Goethe writes the play, Faust is saved in the end and the demons are given a phantom to carry off to hell—a pretty picture that men may do as they like, that they may sell their souls to Satan, and still God will snatch them from the pit of hell.” His words were more thoughtful and serious than they had been before with any of a hundred different topics.

  “That is what our guards think, surely,” Theo said. “That is why Goethe’s Faust would be the best version for Germany now.”

  “They would be better off, these Nazis to read what Marlowe had written, and tremble.”

  “Marlowe is English.”

  “The English have a better idea of right and wrong. They still believe in hell, I think, and perhaps that keeps them from brutality. Germany has ceased to believe in hell. And so they create hell for innocent men and have no fear that they themselves will ever face condemnation. I tell you, Jacob,” the professor whispered to Theo, “Germany has sold its soul, and the fire it brings to the world will come back to itself. Hitler is Satan. Mein Kampf is his book of black magic. Germany is Faust. And the hour will come when . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “When what, Professor?” Theo asked, hoping the old man was not falling to sleep.

  “Like the Faust of Marlowe, Germany will watch the clock run out. And there will be no salvation.” Nearly blind eyes stared up into the darkness of the barrack’s rafters. And then the voice of the old man began to read from the pages of a book he couldn’t see, from a script seared upon his brain:

  “Ah, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,

  And then thou must be damned perpetually!

  Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

  That time may cease, and midnight never come . . .

  Let this hour be but a year, a month, a week, a natural day,

  That Faustus may repent and save his soul!”

  Theo listened to the words, and a chill of horror flooded over him. Had midnight come for Germany? Was it too late for repentance? Too late to ch
ange the course that led irrevocably to damnation?

  “The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,

  The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.

  Oh, I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?

  See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!

  One drop would save my soul—half a drop: ah, my Christ!”

  Theo’s heart beat in the rhythm of the terrible words. Too late! Too late! Too late! The first drop of innocent blood spilled; the first brutal laws of Nuremburg had marked the bloody path. And everyone who had been silent now was stained with guilt. Only the guiltless were within these walls. Inside the very churches of the nation, men prayed prayers that God could not, would not hear! They were prayers meant for Lucifer. Gott mit uns on the buckles of the soldiers should have read Lucifer mit uns!

  The voice, the unearthly whisper of the old man, uttered the last words of one soul, a million souls, who had made a covenant with Evil for the sake of fleeting pleasure:

  “Oh, spare me, Lucifer!

  See where God

  Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!

  Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me.

  And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!

  No! No!

  Then I will run into the earth;

  Oh no, it will not harbor me!”

  Before his eyes, Theo saw a vision of jackbooted SS guards begging the stones of the rock quarry to cover them. The earth and air alike glowed red, and hot hail fell on their backs, just as the lash of their whips had torn the flesh of innocent men.

  “O God,

  If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,

  Yet for Christ’s sake whose blood might have ransomed me,

  Impose some end to my incessant pain;

  Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,

  A hundred thousand, and at last be saved!

  Oh, no end is limited to damned souls!

  The professor stopped the recitation suddenly and turned to Theo. Even in the darkness, eyes covered by cataracts could see clearly, and he said with such sadness that Theo thought they would weep together, “Pity them, Jacob. Pity them for the evil they worship and the end that will surely come to them. Weep for our tormentors who have forgotten that they are also eternal. There will be a moment when it is too late to beg forgiveness.” Julius sounded weary now. The evening’s discussion was over. The professor was right.

  “Oh, it strikes, it strikes! Now body turn to air,

  Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!

  O soul be changed into little water drops,

  And fall into the ocean—never to be found!

  Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!

  I’ll burn my books. . . .”

  The professor fell silent. Soon, his breathing became deep and even in sleep. But Theo lay awake in the gloom as the cries of Marlowe’s Faust echoed in his mind. For so many months Theo had believed that black had become white and wrong had become right. Wasn’t the whole world upside down? Hadn’t Hitler proclaimed that the masses could be made to believe that hell was really heaven? Yes, of course. That was plainly written in Mein Kampf, like the black magic of the books of Doctor Faustus. But one day Germany would cry out, “I’ll burn my books!” And it would be too late. The Nazi murderers would cry for mercy, but they were judged already. The stars still move, time runs, right is still right, and there will be an end to evil one day.

  In the cold, the filth, and the stink of Dachau, Theo Lindheim found consolation in the recitation of the old professor. He was suddenly glad that he was the man being beaten instead of the man who swung the lash. There was something holy and sacred in the foul swill and the crust of bread that they were fed each day. In the dust of the rock quarries, their lives became a cathedral dedicated to a righteous God. It was better, somehow, in Germany these days, to die behind these walls. Because all souls are eternal and the hell of Dachau would only last for a brief moment in time, it was better to suffer now than to cause suffering.

  From that night on, Theo was no longer afraid. The fierce hatred he felt for the well-fed SS officers and guards settled into a quiet pity. “Burn your book of Aryan magic!” he wanted to shout. “There is a hell more fierce than Dachau, and it lasts forever!” But he did not speak to his tormentors. Instead he spoke quietly of the end of suffering to those who were tormented and dying in this place. Every night, like the priest and the cantor, he moved among the moaning men, a shimmering light of hope. They died in his arms. They died with the names of wives and sweethearts on their lips. They died with kaleidoscopic visions of color and stars and hope dancing before their eyes. And unlike Faust, their tormentors could not reach them in the morning.

  38

  The Nightmare

  That long and terrible night, Thomas shared the dark plans of the German High Command with Elisa as she sat next to him. Words that were meant only for the ears of British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill now tumbled out of him. Since he could not comfort her with hope for Theo, he explained, could he not offer some consolation in hope that the madness in Germany would end?

  “I know why you think you cannot care for me,” he said, staring at her hands. Those same hands that caressed me so willingly. “But you must know the truth. All of it, Elisa. I cannot carry such knowledge. I cannot go on unless you know the truth of who I am and can believe in me as you once did.”

  She did not reply. She seemed not to hear. Was she thinking of the walls of Dachau? Or her father and the flash of the machine gun?

  Thomas continued. It did not matter if she heard him. He would at least try to explain! “In July of 1936—” he spoke as though to a judge and jury, his voice a monotone—“just before I was ordered not to see you again, Hitler instructed the general staff to draw up plans for the occupation of Austria. It is called Plan Otto.”

  Now Elisa’s eyes flashed angrily. “Since July? A year and a half ago?”

  “I had only heard rumors of it. I could not say anything. I am under suspicion myself.” He waved his hand as if to express the horror and frustration he felt at such a plan. “So many of us feel the same.” He stared toward the window shade as though he sensed something—someone—outside in the rain. Then he looked back at her. “A year later, on June 24 of this last year, Hitler gave a special directive making the plans official. Three months ago he told the chiefs of the armed forces that Germany must have more living space, and that this could best be found in eastern Europe.”

  Elisa simply stared at him when he paused to let the implications of his words sink in. “Poland?” she asked incredulously. “He has set his sights on more than just Austria?”

  Thomas nodded. “Czechoslovakia. Poland. White Russia. The Ukraine. The chiefs of staff know that this would involve a major war, and as for the people already living in those countries—what does Hitler plan for them?” He looked genuinely frightened. “There are men”—he chose his words carefully—“in the general staff who see the total folly of such a plan.” He did not mention names, many of whom Elisa would have known. A few had served with her father twenty years before and were men he once called friends. “Hitler has said that Germany will have to reckon with her two hateful enemies, England and France. For them, a German Colossus in the center of Europe would not be tolerable. And yet—” he shrugged helplessly—“our army grows each month while the lack of willpower by the British government and France spurs Hitler on in his belief that now is the moment to begin.”

  “And Austria? What of Austria?”

  “Plan Otto will be the first of the steps undertaken, unless—”

  “Unless what, Thomas?” she asked. Clearly his words had driven grief for her father temporarily into the background temporarily.

  “Hitler has broken every article in the Versailles Treaty, and he is wild with his success. First he rearmed Germany. Then he established the draft. Third, he reoccupied the Rhineland and
has established the military barricade of the Siegfried Line along the border of France.” He turned his eyes on Elisa. “Now he has established a strong friendship with Mussolini in Italy.”

  “And so,” she said thoughfully, “the time is right for this Plan Otto? He will invade Austria soon?”

  He saw the realization, the horror hit her. What had happened in the Judenplatz—the bloodbath—would also happen here. He could almost hear the tramp of jackboots on the peaceful street below. What had come to Berlin would come here as well.

  “But, Thomas, you said unless. Unless what?”

  He did not answer right away. “What Hitler has not been able to do with bombs and terror and money to support the Nazis in Vienna, he is quite ready to accomplish through diplomacy.” He took her hands in his and held them. His eyes begged her to understand why he had stayed away so long, why he had been unable to run away from his duty. “I have been sent to certain high officials in the British government. I was instructed to share at least part of Hitler’s plan with them. They are aware of Hitler’s aims for Austria, at any rate.”

  “And?” she demanded.

  “The chief of staff, General Blomberg, is ready to take over the German government . . . if the British are prepared to strongly resist the takeover of Austria.”

  “You have told the British this?” She was amazed, ashamed that she had not even dreamed that Thomas would be part of a force within the German command to stop Nazi tyranny.

  “I did not mention Blomberg by name, of course. But there are many others who stand with us. With every victory that Hitler wins because of the diplomatic appeasement of other nations, he becomes more wildly popular with the German people! Elisa, what he says is believed and acted upon as though he were a god. He has such power over the people! He needs to have a few defeats before they will see. He needs to be stopped cold in his tracks by the great nations standing up to him. The German nationalistic fervor is at such a high pitch that we must move carefully. Do you understand what I am saying?”