The Children's War (130 page)

“Oh, don’t underestimate our medical community!” Mann admonished. “With such a wish list, what would be your most pressing desire?”

“I guess my eyes. I don’t want to lose my sight,” Peter responded without much hesitation. “But there’s no point having a priority list since I can’t afford any of it anyway.”

Alex frowned as he watched the proceedings. It was going well by most measures, the audience certainly loved Peter, but it was not going the way Alex had expected. The topic was digressing terribly, getting more and more personal and less focused on their cause. “Why does he keep talking about himself?” Alex grumbled to himself.

“That
is
what he’s supposed to do,” Anna reminded him. “Remember, he’s supposed to personalize it all.”

“Oh, he’s personalizing it all right. It’s a goddamned one-man freak show!” Alex fumed. “Where are the appeals for arms or political support?”

“I think he’s tired,” Anna defended him, “or sick.”

“Both,” Zosia opined from her position on the floor. “I’d guess he’s concentrating on not vomiting onstage.”

“He gets that ill?” Anna asked.

“Frequently.” Zosia grabbed a piece of cheese from the tray Anna had set on
the coffee table, broke it in half, popped one bit into her mouth, and offered the other piece to Joanna.

“Has he seen a doctor?” Anna asked, concerned.

“Yes. The guy back at Szaflary thought it was linked to the headaches which come from all his head injuries. He said there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that might be true. Or it might be psychosomatic. Peter just gets terrified now and then; I think his fears provoke a lot of his physical symptoms, but he says that’s not the case.”

“What about the booze, that can’t help much,” Alex suggested caustically.

“Naw, the symptoms predate the drinking, and the alcohol actually seems to help, which is why I think it’s stress-related.”

Alex harrumphed his disbelief.

“Has he seen anyone here? They have some wonderful advances in medicine,” Anna pressed.

“He asked the physician who gave him his physical about it. That fellow suggested some pills; some sort of stomach wonder drug.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. Peter wouldn’t fill the prescription, said he was sick of drugs.”

“He should at least try,” Anna insisted.

“Maybe,” Zosia agreed. “But the physician just sort of scribbled this prescription, he didn’t really seem interested in diagnosing the problem. Anyway, unknown drugs scare Peter, so there’s no point forcing him to take them even if they do work. The stress alone would make him sick.”

“What
did
they do to him?” Anna asked almost to herself.

Zosia glanced at Joanna, then decided to answer anyway. “I gather one little game was making him swallow something which would make him violently ill.”

“Why did they do that?”

Alex sputtered at the stupidity of Anna’s question, but Zosia interpreted it correctly. “They were teaching him to obey any command, no matter how painful, immediately and without thought. Since he knew what was going to happen, he might well hesitate, but if he hesitated, they just upped the stakes, thus punishing him for self-defense mechanisms and, in that way, attempting to destroy any reaction on his part other than absolute, mindless obedience.”

“It still affects him, doesn’t it?” Anna asked, though it was clearly not a question.

“Oh, yes,” Zosia agreed. “In ways not even he is sure of.”

“I guess that’s why he—” Anna began, but before she could say more, Alex hushed them both and they returned their attention to the screen.

They were still talking about Peter’s assertion that he had no money.

“How could you afford to come here?” someone asked.

“My expenses were covered by the generosity of some local residents,” Peter
answered obscurely. His visit had never gained official status with any of the governments in exile, and the anti-Conciliation coalition had asked to remain anonymous for fear of indicating to the public at large the raging internal divisions of the exile community. “Understandably, given the Reich’s vindictiveness, they have asked to remain anonymous.”

“And they won’t help you?”

“They can ill afford the expense of medical treatment for the millions of victims of the Reich’s human rights abuses. I am relatively lucky—there is much, much worse. But in any case, our need is not to treat the victims; it is to prevent the abuses in the first place. We must fight them and we need your support to do that,” he answered, rallying slightly.

They were not shaken that easily. He was the one they could see, he was there. If they could solve his problems, then in their consciences, they would have solved the world’s problems. It was a touching approach—the one little candle into the darkness philosophy—and Mann played it for what it was worth.

“I know!” he intoned at the appropriate moment. “We have the resources! We have the ability! We can do it! Let’s get a toll-free number up on the screen.” He gestured theatrically toward his crew. “Can we do that? Can we get a toll-free number? Let’s do it! Let’s see what we can do about restoring this man’s vision!” Mann thought for a moment about linking eyesight-vision with the social-vision thing, but decided it was too difficult on the spur of the moment. “Come on, America! We have a need! Let’s see some response. Let’s get together enough to get this fellow into medical treatment! We can do it, we’re the greatest country on earth—the most generous people! Let’s see what we can do!”

“Oh, God Almighty!” Alex howled, echoing Peter’s thoughts fairly accurately. “What the hell is that maniac doing! We’re not looking for doctors. Speak up, boy! For Christ’s sake say something!”

“I thought he made a good stab at a turnaround,” Anna opined.

“If it didn’t work, it wasn’t any good!” Alex almost shouted.

Zosia motioned to him sharply to tone it down. Not only was Joanna in the room, but as she had explained to her father on numerous occasions, yelling loudly at the television did not cause the people on the screen to hear him—it only annoyed his fellow viewers.

Peter did not speak up. He answered the questions that were put to him, conversed in general about various things, and let Mann take the show along the agenda he had set. Now and then someone announced the running total of the impromptu collection to rousing cheers from the audience.

Dr. Whitmer finally asked why they were collecting money for this man’s medical treatment and not for a poor, black child of the notorious Docklands area. “Europe is always a mess! You Europeans are always killing each other! Why should we get entangled in another one of your stupid and interminable wars?
Why all this money for a white foreigner when our own black children go without!” she accused, looking to Peter for an answer.

Peter had lowered his head during the debate, and he kept it down as he considered her use of the word
foreigner
as if that meant he were a lesser being. Why an
American
child? Why imply that helping him excluded helping another? There were many answers to her question. Many and none. In any case, he felt too sick to argue, so he simply turned toward her, removed his glasses so she could see his eyes, the blue eyes that she so reviled, and answered distinctly, “I don’t know.”

Alex groaned as if in pain as he watched the proceedings. The audience had completely taken over the debate with Dr. Whitmer and Jerry Mann screeching their opinions into the general melee of noise. Peter sat quietly, apparently breathing deeply to contain his nausea, probably with his eyes closed. Meanwhile the total for the collection climbed. Suddenly Alex sat up. There was a way to salvage the situation after all. Certainly they could convince the station to sign over whatever was collected not to a medical fund but to Peter personally. It would only make sense given the danger that they could claim he was in. “He has to go into hiding,” Alex muttered, practicing.

“What are you talking about?” Anna turned to see if he was talking to the television again.

“We’ve got to convince the station to make sure Peter gets the money personally—tell them his life is in danger or some such nonsense. We’ll tell them he’ll use the money as soon as it’s safe, or better yet, under an assumed name.”

“Why?” Anna asked.

“So that Dad can get his hands on it,” Zosia explained.

“Do you think you can get your husband to sign it over to an armaments fund?” Alex asked Zosia.

“Oh, I think he’d be willing to divert most of it to something useful. He might want to reserve a bit to himself for a few things like upgrading his computer.”

“Wouldn’t that be unfair to him?” Anna interjected. The cold-blooded calculations of her husband and children sometimes worried her. Was she the only one who thought that maybe saving his eyesight was useful? That it would be unfair to ask him to throw away this chance he had been given just to buy more guns?

“He’s already looked into it a bit, Ma,” Zosia soothed her mother’s ruffled sensibilities. “The physician said that there was only a forty percent chance that they could even determine what was wrong. And then he said there wasn’t much guarantee they could do anything about it even then. He said it could take months of incredibly expensive tests and procedures, and that the risk of complicating whatever damage had been done might preclude treatment. All in all, he said, we’d end up a lot poorer and not very likely much better off.”

Anna sighed. It was possible the physician had known they were impoverished and had proffered his advice accordingly, in which case a second opinion
would be worthwhile, but she did not say that. When her husband and daughter had their sights set on a goal, there was little point in arguing. If the station released the funds to him directly, Peter would sign over the money to the cause. He would have no choice.

“I’ve got to get down there before he does something stupid with that money. You stay here,” Alex said to Zosia as he rummaged for his documentation and credentials, “there might be cameras around. I’ll see what I can do.” As he headed toward the door, he turned toward Anna and asked, “Do you want to come along?”

Anna shook her head emphatically.

57

A
S THE SHOW
wrapped up, Peter walked off the set. He was not interested in the numerous people who approached him; he just made a polite apology and forced his way through to the backstage area. There, a security guard kept the crowd at bay as the same young woman who had escorted him before came to greet him. “We need to go to the back office so you can see about this collection Jerry organized. What a marvelous humanitarian he is!”

“Yes, he’s something all right,” Peter responded mordantly. He still felt like puking.

As they entered the office in the back, Alex looked up from harassing the man behind the desk and beamed guiltily at Peter. “Ah, my boy, there you are!”

“Isn’t it customary,” Peter asked in Polish, “to wait until the corpse is cold before stealing the coins from its eyes?”

The office staff looked at him blankly, Alex’s smile wavered just the briefest second, then he replied in English, “Good to see you, too! What a wonderful man that Jerry is, isn’t he?”

“A marvelous humanitarian,” Peter responded, borrowing his guide’s words.

“How do you feel?” Alex had not noticed on the television how pale Peter was.

“Ill,” Peter responded tersely.

“Sophie sent you some lemonade,” Alex said, picking up a sealed cup he had set on the desk and handing it to Peter.“Homemade.”

“Oh, we have drinks here!” Peter’s guide responded with alacrity. “I should have offered you something. I’m sorry! Would you like a soda?”

“No, this will do. Thanks,” Peter murmured as he tasted the vodka and lime. Thank God for Zosia’s sense of humor.

As Peter began to relax, Alex explained helpfully, “I was just discussing this collection—”

“What’s the total?” Peter interrupted to ask the man behind the desk.

The clerk tapped a few commands into the computer on his desk, waited a moment, then announced, “Four hundred fifty thousand has been promised so far.”

“Is it genuine?” Peter asked as he studied the high technology scattered about like so much cheap office equipment.

“We’ve collected a lot by credit card—that you’ll get. The rest are pledges— expect about fifty percent of those to materialize.” Clearly they had this operation well established.

“Um,” Peter agreed noncommittally as he finished the last of Zosia’s drink. “How’s it disbursed?”

“Once we’ve collected it all, we’ll deposit it into a special account to pay your medical bills.” The clerk hesitated, then added, “Of course, we’ll need to take a minor administrative fee. Fifteen percent.”

“That won’t work,” Peter replied, feeling a bit better, or at least a little more numb. “I’ll probably have to go into hiding and change my name. I won’t be able to use the funds if they are in a medical account.”

“We could deposit them directly into your personal account,” the clerk offered. “Of course, the administrative fees will be higher. Twenty percent.”

The woman who had escorted Peter shifted uneasily.

“Five percent,” Peter replied, “and I won’t feel obliged to mention these fees to my next audience.”

There was a slight hesitation, then the clerk pressed a button and picked up the phone. He explained the situation, nodded his head, and cradled the phone, smiling. “Ten percent and we won’t mention the redirection.”

“Three,” Peter countered. Alex smiled—he could have saved himself a trip.

“Three? That wouldn’t even cover our expenses!”

“Charge it to advertising costs,” Peter suggested.

The clerk excused himself and left the room. When he returned, he suggested timidly, “Five?”

“Done,” Peter agreed.

“We’ll need your bank details.”

“I live under a pseudonym and have no accounts or legal standing in this country. Sign it all over to my agent here. Mr. Przewalewski will see that it is used as intended.” Peter indicated Alex with a brusque wave of the hand.

Alex could not believe his luck—no cajoling, no bargaining, no sharing with the Brits! A list formed in his head: rifles, bullets, detonators . . . How much could they get? He suppressed an urge to hug his son-in-law.

“All of it?” the clerk asked.

“Every fucking penny,” Peter answered bitterly. He picked up a pen and a loose sheet of paper off the desk, and at the bottom of the blank page he signed his name. “Fill in the details,” he ordered curtly as he handed the page to Alex. As Alex stared nonplussed at the signature, Peter, without another word, walked out of the office.

The woman who had been assigned to help Peter stared after him. She thought perhaps she should follow, but he had seemed so determinedly rude that she decided he could find his own way out. He had been so charming upon his arrival and now he was so sullen! “Moody fellow,” she muttered to herself. Alex and the clerk nodded their agreement.

As he walked down the hall toward an exit, Peter was unable to shake the feeling-that it had been an utter disaster. Not financially—that part had at least been salvaged, but in every other way it was a pointless and humiliating experience. He had been there to talk about their fight for freedom and had ended up in a debate about medical expenses. Had anybody been convinced of anything? The media circus was beginning to wear on him. And these headaches, the nausea— they were so overwhelming and so unpredictable! God, to show such weakness in front of so many people! He had been obliged to retreat into morose silence throughout the last portion of the show. What would people think?

He walked out the back door into the sultry late afternoon. The heat hit him in the face like a blast from a furnace. Even with his protective shades, he winced at the bright sunshine, and it took a moment to realize a small knot of people were gathered there, ostensibly waiting for him. One or two had cameras mounted like second heads on their shoulders, a few others had the intense look of local reporters, but the rest seemed to have no news affiliation whatsoever. The heavy metal door clanged shut behind him, and he realized it was too late to retreat back into the building.

As he descended the few steps into the crowd, he noticed that a number of the people were in a group. They were all young men with shaved heads, each wearing, despite the oppressive heat, heavy black boots. They sported sleeveless T-shirts and an array of tattoos on their arms including the crossed-ax symbol that was the ubiquitous replacement for the illegal swastika.

“Hey! Nigger lover!” one called out to him.

Huh? That would not have been Dr. Whitmer’s opinion, he thought in a sudden confusion. The heat pummeled him, and the sun had reignited the pain in his head.

“Fucking Jew!” another shouted.

“Faggot!”

“Motherfucker!”

Then somebody yelled, “Traitor!”

He turned toward the one who had said that. “To whom?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“To the white race!” the youth shouted in reply. “You’re a weakling!”

“Inferior!”

“They’re defending our race and you betray them!”

“They should have shot you!”

“Bet he’s not even white! Bet if we scrape a bit, we’ll find he’s a nigger!” a lad asserted, pulling out a knife and brandishing it threateningly.

Peter sighed. They were blocking his exit. Then another of them pulled out a small gun; his comrades pulled back slightly to form a loose circle around Peter. The several reporters and cameramen jumped back in alarm, or perhaps excitement. They had been sent out to get a “local-color segment” lasting a few seconds and more likely to be canned than screened, and here they were witnesses to a confrontation, maybe even a murder! It would make the headlines!

Peter glanced at the media people, thoroughly disgusted. It was clear he could expect no help from that quarter. As they whispered excitedly into their microphones, he turned his gaze back to the boys and surveyed them contemptuously.

“Call that a gun?” he asked, pointing at the ridiculous weapon. Diplomacy, explanations, even a debate, might have been more effective than ridicule, but he was in no mood for chatter. His head hurt.

“Want to try it?” the boy answered.

“Sure,” Peter responded, and indicating the spot in front of him, said, “Stand here—the cameras will get a better view of your ugly face.”

The boy hesitated, realizing suddenly the possible consequences of his brazen action. His mouth jerked convulsively as he tried to think of a way out, but it was too late. His options were to commit a felonious assault with a weapon oncamera or to back down in front of his comrades. Actually, he had no choice. On the one hand, the justice system would imprison him, he’d be a hero in the jail, and he’d be a hero when he got out. On the other hand, his buddies would humiliate him, beat him up, and possibly kill him. Unaware that he was taking orders from his intended victim, he went and stood where Peter had indicated.

The fellow with the knife was looking quite surly at being upstaged. Peter glanced at him, fixing his height, weight, and location in his head, then he turned back toward the boy with the gun and waited. At the moment the boy raised the gun, Peter executed a sweeping kick that knocked it out of the boy’s hand and continued up and into the knife wielder’s face. Peter landed slightly off-balance, hammering a knee into the ground, but he quickly recovered into a crouch and spun around, prepared to take on all comers.

There was no reaction—they stood with their mouths stupidly open. The boy who had held the gun stared disconsolately at his hand; the one with the knife was on the ground moaning and holding his face. Seeing their condition, Peter straightened and walked over to the gun. It lay outside the circle of bullies, and as he went through them, they found the wherewithal to move aside. All but the knife wielder turned to look at him.

Peter picked up the gun, sputtering derisively as he looked at it. “Little boys shouldn’t play with grown-up things,” he muttered to himself, and removed the clip. He tossed the gun onto the ground near the reporters and pocketed the clip.

Contemptuously, he scanned the boys, who were only just beginning to recover themselves, and said, “You really are too stupid for words.” Then he turned and walked off.

One of the men whom Peter had thought was a reporter jogged after him.
“Mr. Halifax!” he called out as he caught up with Peter. Peter did not stop walking, but the irritating fellow jogged jovially around in front of him and kept pace with him by trotting backward. “You don’t believe, sir, do you?”

“What?”

“Jesus. You don’t believe in Jesus, do you?” He shoved a pamphlet toward Peter.

“I’m sorry”—Peter shook his head in vague disbelief—“I don’t understand.” When would they leave him alone?

“Jesus loves you. Jesus will solve your every problem. It’s all in here! Read it!” The man pushed the pamphlet into Peter’s hands.

Peter nodded as he grasped the literature. Was the
entire country
insane?

“You should love your enemies. Turn the other cheek! Remember, Jesus loves you.”

Peter formulated a scathing response, but then, remembering the presence of the microphones, he decided against saying anything. There were a lot of religious people among their financial backers; it was better to remain silent. He smiled and responded to the man’s assertion by saying, “I’m sure he does.” Peter pocketed the pamphlet, putting it next to the bullets and, waving farewell, quickened his pace so that he could lose his new backward-trotting friend.

The phone rang and rang. It took forever for Peter to drag himself out of the deep sleep into which he had retreated. Elspeth would be furious, he had to wake himself up before she noticed he was sleeping, before she started kicking him. Oh, God, those new shoes of hers. They hurt. His whole side hurt from yesterday morning. And he had not cleaned them yet, even though she had told him to. But how could he, she was always wearing them! He had to wait until night, and last night he had forgotten. He would have to do them tonight, he dare not forget again. Was it night? Had he forgotten again? Was that why he was having trouble waking up? Damn, the telephone!