The Dreamthief's Daughter: A Tale of the Albino

  Sleep brought me no benefit, no escape. The most peaceful dream I had was of a white hare running through snow, leaving a trail of blood. And still I dreamed of dragons and swords and mighty armies. Any Freudian would have found me a classic case. Perhaps I was, but to me those things were real—more vivid than life.

  I thought that I began to see myself in these dreams. A figure almost always in shadow, with its face shaded, that regarded me from hard, steady eyes the color and depth of rubies. Bleak eyes which held more knowledge than I would care for. Did I look at my future self?

  Somehow I saw this doppelgänger as an ally, yet at the same time I was thoroughly afraid of him.

  When it was my turn for a bunk, I slept well. Even on the floor of the prison, I usually achieved some kind of rest. The guards were a mixture of SA and members of the prison service, who did their best to follow old regulations and see that we were properly treated. This was impossible, by the old standards, but it still meant we occasionally saw a doctor and very rarely one of us was released back to his family.

  We already knew we were privileged. That we were in one of the most comfortable camps in the country. Although still only hinting at the death factories of Auschwitz and Treblinka, Dachau and some of the other places were becoming recognized as murder camps and this, of course, long before the Nazis had ever considered making the Final Solution a reality.

  I was not to know my own “lesson” was only just beginning. After about two months of this, I was summoned from my cell one day by SA Hauptsturmführer Hahn whom we’d come to fear, especially when he was accompanied, as now, by two uniformed thugs we knew as Fritzi and Franzi, since one was tall and thin while the other was short and fat. They reminded us of the famous cartoon characters. Hahn looked like most other SA officers, with a puffy face, a toothbrush mustache, a plug of a nose and two or three tiny receding chins. All he lacked to make him identical to his leader Röhm were the hideous scarred face and the rapacious proclivities which would make men hide their sons when he and his gang came to town.

  I was marched between Fritzi and Franzi up and down stairs, through tunnels and corridors until I was brought at last to the commandant’s office where Major Hausleiter, a corrupt old drunk who would have been drummed out of any decent army, awaited me. Since my reception, when he had seemed embarrassed, I had only seen him at a distance. Now he seemed nervous. Something was in the air and I had a feeling that Hausleiter would be the last to know what was really going on. He told me that I was being paroled on “humanitarian leave” under the charge of my cousin, now Major von Minct, for a “trial period.” He advised me to keep my nose clean and cooperate with people who only had my good at heart. If I returned to Sachsenburg, it might not be with the same privileges.

  Someone had found my clothes. Doubtless Gaynor or one of his people had brought them from Bek. The shirt and suit hung on my thinner than usual body, but I dressed carefully, tying the laces of my shoes, making a neat knot of my tie, determined to look as well as possible when I confronted my cousin.

  Escorted into the castle courtyard by Fritzi and Franzi, I found Prince Gaynor waiting beside his car. Klosterheim was not with him, but the glowering driver was the same.

  Gaynor raised his hand in that ridiculous “salute” borrowed from American movie versions of Roman history and bid me good afternoon.

  I got into the car without a word. I was smiling to myself.

  When we were driving through the gates and leaving the prison behind, Gaynor asked me why I was smiling.

  “I was simply amused by the lengths of playacting you and your kind are willing to allow yourselves. And apparently without embarrassment.”

  He shrugged. “Some of us find it easier to ape the absurd. After all, the world has become completely absurd, has it not?”

  “The humorous aspects are a little wasted on some of those camp inmates,” I said. In prison I had met journalists, doctors, lawyers, scientists, musicians, most of whom had been brutalized in some way. “All we can see are degenerate brutes pulling down a culture because they cannot understand it. Bigotry elevated to the status of law and politics. A decline into a barbarism worse than we knew in the Middle Ages, with the ideas of that time turned into ‘truth.’ They are told obvious lies—that some six hundred and forty thousand Jewish citizens somehow control the majority of the population. Yet every German knows at least one ‘good’ Jew, which means that there are sixty million ‘good’ Jews in the country. Which means that the ‘bad’ Jews are heavily outnumbered by the ‘good.’ A problem Goebbels has yet to solve.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he will in time.” Gaynor had removed his cap and was unbuttoning his uniform jacket. “The best lies are those which carry the familiarity of truth with them. And the familiar lie often sounds like the truth, even to the most refined of us. A resonant story, you know, will do the trick with the right delivery . . .”

  I must admit the spring air was refreshing and I thoroughly enjoyed the long drive to Bek. I scarcely wanted it to end, since I had anxieties about what I might find at my home. After asking me how I had liked the camp, Gaynor said very little to me as we drove along. He was less full of himself than when I’d last seen him. I wondered if he had made promises to his masters which he’d been unable to keep.

  It was dusk before we passed through Bek’s gates and came to a stop in the drive outside the main door. The house was unusually dark. I asked what had happened to the servants. They had resigned, I was told, once they realized they had been working for a traitor. One had even died of shame.

  I asked his name.

  “Reiter, I believe.”

  I knew that feeling had returned. My spirits sank. My oldest, most faithful retainer. Had they killed him asking him questions about me?

  “The coroner reported that Reiter died of shame, eh?”

  “Officially, of course, it was the heart attack.” Gaynor stepped out into the darkness and opened my door for me. “But I’m sure two resourceful fellows like us will be able to make ourselves at home.”

  “You’re staying?”

  “Naturally,” he said. “You are in my custody, after all.”

  Together we ascended the steps. There was a crude padlock on the door. Gaynor called the driver to come forward and open it. Then we stepped into a house that smelled strongly of damp and neglect and worse. There was no gas or electricity, but the driver discovered some candles and oil lamps and with the help of these I surveyed the wreckage of my home.

  It had been ransacked.

  Most things of value were gone. Pictures had vanished from walls. Vases. Ornaments. The library had disappeared. Everything else was scattered and broken where Gaynor’s thugs had clearly left it. Not a room in the house was undamaged. In some cases where there was nothing at all of value, men had urinated and defecated in the rooms. Only fire, I thought, could possibly cleanse the place now.

  “The police seem to have been a little untidy in their searches,” Gaynor said lightly. His face was thrown into sharp, demonic contrast by the oil lamp’s light. His dark eyes glittered with unwholesome pleasure.

  I knew too much self-discipline and was far too weak physically to throw myself on him, but the impulse was there. As anger came back, so, in a strange way, did life.

  “Did you supervise this disgusting business?” I asked him.

  “I’m afraid I was in Berlin during most of the search. By the time I arrived, Klosterheim and his people had created this. Naturally, I berated them.”

  He didn’t expect to be believed. His tone of mockery remained.

  “You were looking for a sword, no doubt.”

  “Exactly, cousin. Your famous sword.”

  “Famous, apparently, amongst Nazis,” I retorted, “but not amongst civilized human beings. Presumably you found nothing.”

  “It’s well hidden.”

  “Or perhaps it does not exist.”

  “Our orders are to tear the place down, stone by stone and beam by beam
, until it is nothing but debris, if we have to. You could save all this, dear cousin. You could save yourself. You could be sure of spending your life in contentment, an honored citizen of the Third Reich. Do you not yearn for these things, cousin?”

  “Not at all, cousin. I’m more comfortable than I was in the trenches. I have better company. What I yearn for is altogether more general. And perhaps unattainable. I yearn for a just world in which educated men like yourself understand their responsibilities to the people, in which issues are decided by informed public debate, not by bigotry and filthy rhetoric.”

  “What? Sachsenburg hasn’t shown you the folly of your childish idealism? Perhaps it’s time for you to visit Dachau or some camp where you’ll be far less comfortable than you were in those damned trenches. Ulric, don’t you think those trenches meant something to me, too!” He had suddenly lost his mockery. “When I had to watch men of both sides dying for nothing, being lied to for nothing, being threatened for nothing. Everything for nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And seeing all that nothing, are you surprised someone like myself might not grow cynical and realize that nothing is all we have in our future.”

  “Some come to the same realization but decide we still have it in us to make a life on earth. Through tolerance and good will, cousin.”

  He laughed openly at that. He waved a gauntleted hand around the ruins of my study.

  “Well, well, cousin. Are you pleased with everything your good will has brought you?”

  “It has left me with my dignity and self-respect.” Sanctimonious as that sounded, I knew I might never have another chance to say it.

  “Oh, dear Ulric. You have seen how we end, have you not? Writhing in filthy ditches trying to push our own guts back into our bodies? Shrieking like terrified rats? Climbing over the corpses of friends to get a crust of dirty bread? And worse. We all saw worse, did we not?”

  “And better, perhaps. Some of us saw visions. Miracles. The Angel of Mons.”

  “Delusions. Criminal delusions. We cannot escape the truth. We must make what we can of our hideous world. In truth, cousin, it’s safe to say that Satan rules in Germany today. Satan rules everywhere. Haven’t you noticed? America, where they hang black men on a whim and where the Ku Klux Klan now puts state governors into office? England, which kills, imprisons and exiles thousands of Indians who naively seek the same rights as other citizens of the Empire? France? Italy? All those civilized nations of the world, who brought us our great music, our literature, our philosophy and our sophisticated politics. What was the result of all this refinement? Gas warfare? Tanks? Battle airplanes? If I seem contemptuous of you, cousin, it is because you insist on seeking the delusion. I have respect only for people like myself, who see the truth for what it is and make sure their own lives are not made wretched by allegiance to some worthless principle, some noble ideal, which could well be the very ideal which sends us into the next war, and the next. The Nazis are right. Life is a matter of brute struggle. Nothing else is real. Nothing.”

  Again, I was amused. I found his ideas worthless and foolish, entirely self-pitying. The logic of a weak man who arrogantly assumed himself stronger than he was. I had seen others like him. Their own failures became the failures of whole classes, governments, races or nations. The most picturesque were inclined to blame the entire universe for their own inability to be the heroes they imagined themselves to be. Self-pity translated into aggression is an unpredictable and unworthy force.

  “Your self-esteem seems to rise in direct proportion to the decline of your self-respect,” I said.

  As if from habit, he swung on me, raising his gloved fist. Then my eyes locked with his and he dropped his arm, turning away. “Oh, cousin, you understand so little of mankind’s capacity for cruelty,” he hissed. “I trust you’ll have no further experience of it. Just tell me where the sword and cup are hidden.”

  “I know nothing of a cup and sword,” I said. “Or its companion blade.” That was the closest I came to lying. I wanted to go no further than that. My own sense of honor demanded I stop.

  Gaynor sighed, tapping his foot on the old boards. “Where could you have hidden it? We found its case. No doubt where you left it for us. In that cellar. The first place we searched. I guessed you’d be naive enough to bury your treasures as deep as you could. A few taps on the wall and we found the cavity. But we had underestimated you. What did you do with that sword, cousin?”

  I almost laughed aloud. Had someone else stolen Ravenbrand? Someone who held it in no particular value? No wonder the house was in such a condition.

  Gaynor was like a wolf. His eyes continued to search the walls and crannies. He paced nervously as he talked.

  “We know the sword’s in the house. You didn’t take it away. You didn’t give it to your visitors. So where did you put it, cousin?”

  “The last I saw Ravenbrand was in that case.”

  He was disgusted. “How can someone so idealistic be such a thoroughgoing liar. Who else could have taken the sword from the case, cousin? We interrogated all the servants. Even old Reiter didn’t confess until his confession was clearly meaningless. Which left you, cousin. Not up the chimneys. Not under the floorboards. Not in a secret panel or a cupboard. We know how to search these old places. Not in the attics or the eaves or the beams or the walls, as far as we can discover. We know your father lost the cup. We got that out of Reiter. He heard one name, ‘Miggea.’ Do you know that name? No? Would you like to see Reiter, by the way? It might take you a while to spot something about him that you recognize.”

  Having nothing to gain from controlling my anger, I had the satisfaction of striking him one good blow on the ear, like a bad schoolboy.

  “Be quiet, Gaynor. You sound as banal as a villain from a melodrama. Whatever you did to Reiter or do to me, I’m sure it’s the foulest thing your fouler brain could invent.”

  “Flattering me at this late stage is a little pointless.” He grumbled to himself as, rubbing his ear, he marched about the ruins of my study. He had become used to brutish power. He acted like a frustrated ape. He was trying to recover himself, but hardly knew how anymore.

  At last he regained some poise. “There are a couple of beds upstairs which are still all right. We’ll sleep there. I’ll let you consider your problem overnight. And then I’ll cheerfully give you up to the mercies of Dachau.”

  And so, in the bedroom where my mother had given birth to me and where she had eventually died, I slept, handcuffed to the bedpost with my worst enemy in the other bed. My dreams were all of pale landscapes over which ran the white hare who led me to a tall man, standing alone in a glade. A man who was my double. Whose crimson eyes stared into my crimson eyes and who murmured urgent words I could not hear. And I knew a terror deeper than anything I had so far experienced. For a moment I thought I saw the sword. And I awoke screaming.

  Much to Gaynor’s satisfaction.

  “So you’ve come to your senses,” he said. He sat up in a bed covered with feminine linen. An incongruous sight. He jumped to the floor in his silk underwear and rang a bell. A few moments later, Gaynor’s driver arrived with his uniform almost perfectly pressed. I was uncuffed and my own clothes were handed to me in a pillowcase. I did my best to look as smart as possible while Gaynor waited impatiently for his turn in the only surviving bathroom.

  The driver served us bread and cheese on plates he had evidently cleaned himself. I saw rat droppings on the floor and recalled what I had to look forward to. Dachau. I ate the food. It might be my last.

  “Is the sword somewhere in the grounds?” asked Gaynor. His manner had changed, had become eager.

  I finished my cheese and smiled at him cheerfully. “I have no idea where the sword is,” I said. I was lighthearted because I had no need to lie. “It appears to have vanished on its own volition. Perhaps it followed the cup.”

  My cousin was snarling as he stood up. His hand fell on the holstered pistol at his belt, at which I laughed more heartily. “W
hat a charlatan you have become, Gaynor. Clearly you should be acting in films. Herr Pabst would snap you up if he could see you now. How can you know if I’m telling you the truth or not?”

  “My orders are not to offer you any kind of public martyrdom.” His voice was so low, so furious, that I could hardly hear it. “To make sure that you died quietly and well away from the public eye. It’s the only thing, cousin, that makes me hold back from testing your grip on the truth myself. So you’ll be returned to the pleasures of Sachsenburg and from there you’ll be sent on to a real camp, where they know how to deal with vermin of your kind.”

  Then he kicked me deliberately in the groin and slapped my face.

  I was still handcuffed.

  Gaynor’s driver led me from my house and back into the car.

  This time Gaynor sat me in front with the driver while he lounged, smoking and scowling, in the back. As far as I know, he never looked at me directly again.

  His masters were no doubt beginning to think they had overestimated him. As he had me. I guessed that the sword had been saved by Herr El, “Diana” and the White Rose Society and would be used by them against Hitler. My own death, my own silence, would not be wasted.

  I made the best use I could of the journey and slept a little, ate all that was available, dozed again, so that we had driven back through the gates and were in the great black shadow of Sachsenburg Castle before I realized it.

  Fritzi and Franzi were waiting for me. They came forward almost eagerly as I stepped from the car.

  They were clearly pleased to see me home.

  They had clubbed me to the ground, in fact, and were in the process of beating my skinny body black and blue before Gaynor’s car had gone roaring back into the night. I heard a voice from a window above and then I was being dragged, almost insensibly, back to my cell where Hellander and Feldmann attempted to deal with the worst of my bruises as I lay in agony on a bunk, convinced that more than one bone had been broken.