A Perfect Madness (10 page)

Franz’s words came at Erich with the
fury of a winter storm. Laced with an icy demonic fear he had never
felt before, they coursed through his body like a winter river,
numbing his mind momentarily and blocking out the face of reason.
Ice climbing with his student friends in the Austrian Alps always
produced an exhilarating thrill laced with fear, too, but it was of
a kind without which such a dangerous undertaking would be
meaningless; yet the hidden meaning there was that you might die.
Later, looking back on this brief episode with Franz, he concluded
that the power of this emotion when turned loose and allowed to
roam unbridled was far greater than anything the human mind could
handle. Rather, it was totally alive and animalistic, like a herd
of cattle stampeding wildly and uncontrollably, frightened by the
jagged bolts of lightning and booming thunder of a storm. Without
an understanding, the mind becomes blank, empty of reason, and we
know nothing of what we might do to stay alive. There are no
boundaries, except for the strongest.

Franz noticed Erich’s sudden pale,
stupor-like appearance and took hold of his arm.

“
Are you ill, or did I
frighten you?”

“
A little of both perhaps.
I suppose the idea of the Gestapo here secretly in Prague would
frighten anyone. But tell me, if you know, why their interest in
me? Is it because of my father?”

“
You are not my friend
yet, Erich, nor my enemy. However, we need not choose now which it
will be; that time will come soon enough. I will tell you this,
though: your relationship with Dr. Kaufmann and his family has not
gone unnoticed.”

“
They are nothing more
than friends.”

“
They are dirty Jews.
Nothing more needs to be said.”

Erich stared at Franz, trying to
fathom the disease of hate festering in this man’s body, oozing out
now from every pore like sickened yellow puss. Where does such hate
come from? Erich could only shake his head at the wonder of Franz’s
ignorance, and even that of his own. He knew very little about him
except that his father was a very wealthy manufacturer in the
Sudeten and was a main financial source for the National Socialist
Party there. From the first day Franz entered the university, he
would boast constantly about his father’s direct line to the
Chancellery in Berlin, and the important party members who would
gather around his father at state dinners as if he were Hitler
himself. Through such boasting, he immediately became an important
leader of the Sudeten students, very dangerous, and never afraid to
challenge the university over who should control the minds of the
students. Quickly reinstated from his suspension by the university
after the Sudetenland became Germany’s, Franz ruled the student
body, and he knew it. At the moment, though, he was tiring of the
game being played out with Erich, and looked at him with mounting
anger in his eyes.

“
I will tell you this
also. Hitler will come to Prague soon and the Jews will be
arrested. The important ones first, like your Dr. Kaufmann and his
friends, and then the rest.”

“
Franz, we are to become
doctors, you and I, not soldiers. Politics and the Jews are not our
concern,” Erich said foolishly, trying to insert reason into the
terrible discussion and help dispel his own fears.

“
Ha! You fool. Didn’t Dr.
Weber’s words just yell out to us to arise as doctors in defense of
the Third Reich? There is much to be done with glory for
everyone.”

Erich noticed for the first time the
large gathering of students beginning to crowd around him and
Franz, eagerly anticipating some sort of physical confrontation.
They were there for Franz should he need them. Erich knew what they
wanted, but said nothing more, and began pushing his way through
the circling crowd. Then he stopped and looked back across the open
circle at Franz.

“
You are right, Franz,”
Erich said, smiling. “Glory does await us. What kind I can only
guess, but I do know we will be doctors, and that should make us
different from all the rest.” Then he saluted mockingly and walked
from the lecture hall. He would go to Julia and her family to find
the warmth he so desperately needed now, but he would wait until
evening when the shadows were longer and he would less likely be
seen.

Standing alone, hidden in the
spreading fingers of darkness cast by the Old Town Hall, Erich
waited patiently for the astronomical clock to strike eight before
starting across the Old Town square to Julia’s home. Paranoia is
the first triumph of fear, and it was beginning to smother him. All
else comes easy, he kept telling himself, once reason sinks in the
rising waters of paranoia. And it is then, when reason drowns and
dies, that monsters appear and everything becomes false, including
who you are.

At the first strike of eight from the
massive clock, Erich walked rapidly around the corner of the Old
Town square, stopping briefly in front of St. Nicholas Church to
listen for any light taps of following footsteps before
disappearing into the winding streets of the old Jewish quarters.
Julia’s street seemed darker than usual to him this night; few
lights shown in the houses and apartment buildings along the street
as he made his way to her place. Turning into her walkway, Erich
saw two menacing shadows moving slowly towards him from the right
and braced himself for what he believed was about to happen. The
shadows moved closer but abruptly stopped when a ray of light from
Dr. Kaufmann’s study suddenly split the night with its brightness.
No longer able to conceal their identities, the bolder of the two
stepped forward to confront Erich.

“
We have been waiting on
you.”

Recognizing both men as classmates,
Erich heaved a sigh of relief.

“
Karl, Rudy, what are you
two doing here? I nearly pissed in my pants from
fright.”

“
Good,” Karl said. “You
should be afraid. Perhaps you will come to your senses now and
leave Julia to her Jewish friends. Next time someone who is not
your friend could be standing here.”

Erich looked closely at the faces of
his two friends and saw only despair, no longer the carefree
happiness they had shared through their early years of schooling
back in Germany. Every winter break, the Austrian Alps awaited
their frolicking in the deep snow and their fearless skiing on the
steep slopes, each racing the other two regardless of the danger.
Summer found them eager and daring to try to scale the highest of
the rocky trails. But when they came to Prague together, they
tolerated Julia’s gradual intrusion into the threesome only because
of their close friendship with Erich. A greater loyalty, though,
had fractured their tight circle now: duty to the state. And like
the changing shapes of drifting clouds, all else would disappear,
never to be the same again. What one might feel and believe today
would be gone when tomorrow came.

Rudy, the youngest of the three, spoke
next. “We have joined the National Socialist Party, Erich, and you
must join, too. It is right that you do.”

“
Nothing is right anymore,
Rudy. Everything is strange, even friendships.”

“
We are still your
friends. Why else would we be here? We came to warn you,” Rudy
said, with some hidden pride in his voice.

“
And Julia?”

“
She has never been our
friend, only yours,” Karl spouted loudly.

How distant these dear friends had
become in a matter of minutes, Erich mused. He no longer really
mattered to them, nor they to him. One’s future carries little
meaning when undressed by fear, only that which you are afraid of,
and what tomorrow might bring. But Erich knew they were as afraid
as he was in a world that no longer made any sense.

“
You should leave before
the wrong parties find you here,” he said, placing his hands on his
friends’ shoulders as if it were a final goodbye to another time.
Then he turned away from them, hurt and angry at their callous
dismissal of Julia’s friendship from their life. As he had, they
too had broken bread in her home.

As he stepped onto the front porch,
Julia opened the door quickly before he could knock.

“
I watched you from
father’s study talking with Karl and Rudy. Are there
problems?”

“
Where is your father?”
Erich asked, ignoring Julia’s question.

“
Waiting for you in the
kitchen. We can have coffee and some dessert there.”

“
The kitchen. I have
arrived at last,” Erich said, laughing nervously.

“
No. It is warmer there.
The night seems strangely colder for some reason,” Julia said,
turning away from him.

Entering the small kitchen where Dr.
Kaufmann and Hiram were, Erich glanced hurriedly around the
sparsely but brightly decorated room. How strangely different it
was from his own in Dresden. There, uniformity in design and
purpose set the décor. While unspeakably clean, nothing was alive.
No warmth or love leaped from the walls to grab you as it did here.
Four seemly ancient wooden chairs of questionable reliability and a
table leveled by a carefully measured stack of wooden chips under
two legs occupied the center of the room. On one wall were two odd
paintings of bearded old men, whom Erich believed must be religious
because they meant nothing to him. Everywhere, in the windows and
along the countertops, brightly colored flowers sat in an odd array
of containers, bringing their own special joy to the soul’s eye.
But it was the pleasant mixture of lingering aromas that stirred
the senses of all who entered.

Seated, Dr. Kaufmann rose when Erich
entered the room.

“
Please come sit down,” he
said, extending his hand to Erich. “Mrs. Kaufmann has brewed a pot
of fresh coffee and baked my favorite apple strudel for a late
dessert.”

Erich sensed a hidden embarrassment in
Dr. Kaufmann’s politeness and looked to Julia for some kind of
explanation, but she continued to avoid his eyes. Hiram, though
sitting directly across the table from him, would not look at him
either. It was as if he had intruded on some holy day, though they
had not meant it to be so. When Mrs. Kaufmann set the apple strudel
dish in front of Dr. Kaufmann, the faintest of tears could be seen
glistening in the corners of her eyes before she turned and left
the room. Dr. Kaufmann started to slice the warm dessert but
stopped and laid the cutting knife back down on the table. He was
clearly sick at heart with what he knew he must say to Erich, but
before he could begin, Mrs. Kaufmann returned to the kitchen
leading by hand a young woman, trailed by two small children. Their
clothes were soiled with filth from days and nights of hiding from
police and rampaging mobs roaming the streets in every Sudeten town
searching for Jews and gentile anti-Nazis.

Erich needed no introduction to the
frightened woman, nor did he especially want one. Her kind had not
gone unnoticed. A steady stream of weary and frightened refugees
were pouring into Prague, first from Germany and Austria, but now
from the Sudetenland, their horror stories numbing the civilized
minds of those who would listen. It didn’t take a bold imagination
to grasp what life would be like for Jews when Hitler came to
Prague. History’s mistakes are forever repeated because the world
will always sit smugly apart in its false innocence asking the same
question: how did all of this come to be? Erich looked at the
scared and crippled humanity huddled in the corner of the kitchen
and knew then there was no more time left. After the woman told her
story of watching her mother and father and other Jews chased naked
through the streets in Karlovy Vary before being murdered, no one
could bargain another tomorrow from God. One could only wonder
years later where He had gone.

“
Erich,” Dr. Kaufmann
began again, his voice more unsure than before, “we will break
bread together this last time, then you must go.”

Stunned by Dr. Kaufmann’s abrupt words
of dismissal from their life, Erich searched Julia’s face for an
answer, but she quickly turned her back to him, sobbing
softly.

“
You do understand the
danger we face each time you visit Julia. The Czech authorities
were here today, your German friends tonight.”

“
The authorities here in
Prague?”

“
Yes, inquiring about our
religion and race, even what language was spoken at home. They
wanted to see my library and the books and journals I
read.”

“
They know you are
Jews?”

“
Of course. That was their
only reason to be here. It is happening to all the Jews in Prague,”
Dr. Kaufmann responded, surprised at Erich’s naïveté.

Before continuing, Dr. Kaufmann took a
long, deliberate sip of coffee, set the cup down and looked
longingly at Mrs. Kaufmann, pulling from her the needed strength
and understanding she kept stored for him. At the same time, Julia
moved around the table and stood close to Erich, their arms
touching at first, then took his hand, gently pressing it to her
side as her father continued.

“
I am afraid when Hitler
takes Prague, the end will begin for many of us—Jews and anti-Nazi
Czechs, maybe gypsies. They will have the names, just like they did
in the Sudeten.”

“
I will not come here
anymore. Perhaps they will leave you alone then,” Erich said
without hesitation.