A Perfect Madness (17 page)

“
Well, it still doesn’t
seem right not to say good-bye, to wish them well.”

“
When I left home to come
to Prague, my grandmother didn’t say one word of goodbye, ’cause
she didn’t know who I might be. In fact, she thought I was one of
those Hungarian whores who slip now and then into Bratislava when
business is slow in Budapest, and she said she certainly wasn’t
going to say goodbye to some whore she didn’t know,” Eva said,
trying hard to keep a straight face, even though what she had said
was true.

Julia stretched her eyes wide at Eva’s
words for a second, then burst out laughing. The depth of Eva’s
homegrown intelligence and wit continually amazed her. With little
formal schooling, what she could come up with at a moment’s notice
to untangle a sticky conversation could challenge the gods. To
Julia, Eva could give light to the darkest of nights when the moon
and stars stayed hidden and to the days when there was no sunrise.
Her learning came from a wisdom deep in the soil around her, a
thousand years of listening to all who came before her, and who had
worked the land as she did. But in her training with Czech
intelligence, Eva would always defer to Julia because she could
reach inside the nuts and bolts being put before them haphazardly
and find the solution they wanted to hear.

Thirty minutes after leaving the
station, they neared the dense row of trees near the billets where
she had been attacked. Julia stopped and looked and listened, not
for any human shadows that might be waiting along the dark pathway
before them, but for the sounds of the night. Even now, wherever
she went, they always seemed to be around her.

“
God’s guardian angels,”
her mother had told her one night, as they listened to the rustling
sounds together. “They are moving about, here and there as fast as
they can, watching over all of us when we sleep.”

When she told Hiram about the angels,
he laughed and teased her for days about such foolishness, making
her cry each time. Then late one night when she was listening to
the sounds in her bed, he tiptoed in and said, “The sounds you are
hearing are the souls of bad people rushing around, trying to find
a place to sleep, maybe even with you,” causing her to cry even
louder, much to his delight. Julia didn’t believe in angels
anymore, but she still loved the sounds moving through the trees at
night, as she did the voices of the river, because they told her
she was alive.

“
Are you alright?” Eva
asked, puzzled by Julia’s sudden behavior.

“
Oh yes, I’m fine.
Wait—you can hear them, can’t you?”

“
Hear what, for god’s
sake?”

“
Those sounds—the wind and
the leaves and the—”

“
You are tired, Julia.
Your head is too fuzzy-full of joy and sadness, when there is room
for only one or the other, not both at the same time.”

“
I know. But they’ll still
be there tomorrow night and all the nights afterwards, and I’ll
keep on hearing and loving them. They are part of my existence. Do
you understand?”

“
Yes, but I don’t know
why,” Eva answered, clearly frustrated with everything being said.
Sounds were not what they should be talking about. It was the
letter in her pocket from her own brother in Bratislava telling her
what was beginning to happen to all of the Jews in Czechoslovakia.
But Eva knew it was his way of letting her go, just as Hiram had
Julia, but for a tragically different reason. She would wait until
tomorrow, or maybe never, to tell Julia about the
letter.

Later, when they arrived at their
quarters, Eva reminded Julia of their expected move tomorrow to
Chichley Hall in Buckinghamshire. There they were to begin a long
and vigorous training as Czech agents through the British
intelligence program labeled M16. If all went well, it was then
they would return to Prague. Julia only nodded to Eva, offering a
faint smile as she closed the door behind her. Tomorrow meant
nothing now, only sleep with a few dreams thrown in, perhaps, of
Anna and Erich.

***

TWELVE

Erich, Leipzig, 1940

E
rich and Leipzig
were never strangers. He had traveled there many times alone and
with his family from their home in Dresden, to attend the great
music festivals held in the city throughout the spring and summer
months. How could he not like Leipzig? Art, his first love, called
to him from every corner, and the musical notes of the old German
masters filled the air wherever he walked. St. Thomaskirche’s
magnificent baroque organ, played by Bach and Mendelssohn, was
there, still to be listened to by those who continued to nurture
their soul with an ethereal passion for life. He would be
comfortable there, working in the pediatric clinic, waiting for the
right moment to leave Germany. Perhaps through neutral Switzerland
he could find safe passage to England where Julia had gone. Time
seemed on his side now, he believed, and the dark nightmares of the
two murdered Jews in Prague would grow distant and no longer haunt
him.

Professor Werner Catel, a
distinguished psychiatrist in his own right, reluctantly welcomed
Erich to the Leipzig Pediatrics Clinic for no other reason than his
father’s prestige and standing in Hitler’s Chancellery.
Introductions to the medical staff, and anyone else who might be
important, were always prefaced with “He is Herr Dr. Vicktor
Schmidt’s son.” In time, his father’s name became a suit of
impenetrable armor, protecting Erich’s pseudo-prestige wherever he
went in the clinic. He had become politically important at the age
of twenty-nine, and no one would try to cross him. But Erich cared
little for those around him, and carefully avoided offering the
slightest hint of friendship when working with them. Maintaining
such a detached persona would keep him free of obligations and
serve him well in the trying days to come. What he really wanted
was experience, nothing more, before he tried to leave.

Three months into his work at the
clinic, Erich received an urgent note from Dr. Catel requesting
that he accompany him to the Görden Institution in Brandenburg in
the afternoon. Nothing more was said, leaving Erich puzzled at the
sudden development, yet thrilled over the opportunity to visit
Görden. Everyone in medicine was aware of the extensive research
being conducted in this important hospital, especially in exciting
new treatment protocols for the mentally ill. Psychiatry was at its
best there, Erich knew.

At two o’clock he was in Dr. Catel’s
office, anxiously waiting to start their visit to Görden, a visit
that never came. Instead, Dr. Catel had gone alone to Görden,
leaving word for him to be in his office the first thing in the
morning. When morning came, he went to Dr. Catel’s office, still
quite angry at being left behind.

“
It is official now, Herr
Doctor. We are to have our own Special Psychiatric Youth Department
here at the University of Leipzig,” Dr. Catel said, smiling broadly
as Erich entered the office. “We are to play a leading role in
developing the most advanced therapeutic possibilities for treating
mentally ill children.”

Unimpressed, Erich asked curtly, “Why
was I left behind? You should have a good reason.”

“
Your tone is insolent,
Dr. Schmidt, but I will overlook it because of your father. Now
come with me, I want your opinion on a special case brought to the
clinic early this morning.”

Dr. Catel strode from the office and
down the main hall with Erich following and took the emergency exit
steps to the second floor, where two other doctors were waiting for
them. Both ignored Erich, who was not their favorite person.
Turning to their right, the group walked down a short hall to a
small, isolated ward in which there was only one patient, an infant
boy named Knauer, born blind, with one leg and part of one arm
missing. “Apparently an idiot” had been written in red on his
bedside chart by the attending physician, who was not with them.
What immediately seemed unusually strange to Erich and the others
was that the infant had been admitted to the hospital by his father
and not by a physician.

Looking at the pitifully disfigured
child lying before him, Erich knew why the boy was here but refused
to believe it.

“
Dr. Schmidt,” Dr. Catel
began, staring hard into his soul. “Would you agree there is no
known way medically to heal the mind of an idiot?”

Erich nodded hesitantly.

“
What then would be the
most humane treatment we could offer this poor child to cure his
miserable existence?”

Erich worked feverishly to clear his
mind from what he was hearing. Dr. Catel had purposely trapped him.
The bastard had cast out a line baited with compassion and he had
grabbed it like a starving pond fish.

“
It would seem to help him
die peacefully, but that’s not a matter for doctors to decide. He
is still a human being—a person, though a woeful one,” Erich said,
finally finding his voice.

“
Yes, perhaps. But he came
here for treatment and we have none to offer that will change his
horrible existence, other than relieving him of it.”

Puzzled by Dr. Catel’s words, Erich
and the other doctors looked to each other for an
answer.

“
Are you suggesting we
should euthanize this child?” Dr. Mauer, the senior doctor in the
group, finally asked.

“
I’ve said nothing of the
kind, but it is on the table. The baby’s father has requested we do
so.”

“
It is plain and simple
murder, and I’ll have no part of it,” Dr. Mauer said.

“
It is not murder, if it
is an accepted medical procedure authorized by the Health Ministry.
Would you not agree?” Dr. Catel asked, turning back to
Erich.

For a quick second, Erich thought back
to his voyage to America with his father, and to Cold Springs
Harbor’s genetics center, where the earliest thoughts of eugenics
began, even killing the unfit. His father believed medicine would
someday come to this, to a carefully planned way of cleansing the
gene pool of all the miserable souls. For Erich, though, nothing
had changed.

“
But it isn’t,” he
responded emphatically. “And if it were, it would be the worst kind
of wrong, one clearly beyond anyone’s imagination.”

“
Your father would not
agree.”

“
I know, but he has his
own soul to contend with, not mine.”

An uneasy silence followed Erich’s
words, their meaning clear to everyone in the group, including Dr.
Catel. No one said anything, or wanted to, because the idea of
euthanasia as a necessary medical procedure to protect the health
of the citizenry was too theoretical and too controversial, even to
Erich. No Christian doctor in his right mind, he believed, would
ever consider taking this final step to reality, even though many
would agree with the ultimate end being sought. Would we not
safeguard the health of the country by eliminating the diseased
few? had been the argument thrown at medicine by the Chancellery.
And it was even more compelling, Erich knew, in a national crisis
such as war, and Germany was at war. After several more moments of
an awkward silence, Dr. Catel searched the faces of the other
doctors, hoping for some sort of response, but none came. Meeting
the request of the father to mercifully kill his child would be
impossible now without involving the Chancellery in
Berlin.

“
We will talk more about
this matter tomorrow,” Dr. Catel said, turning and abruptly leaving
Erich and his colleagues in the child’s room.

Seconds later the two doctors left,
leaving Erich alone by the child’s bedside. In the years of his
medical training, he had never examined, nor worked with, nor tried
to treat such a child. Leaning over the bedside, he suddenly
clapped his hands loudly, causing the child to stir, trying
desperately to see through eyes that saw only darkness. Taking the
tiny fingers on the child’s only hand, Erich gently squeezed them
but felt no response. Only a crippled animal lay before him that
would never be more than it was now.

“
Tell me, young Knauer,
what is it like to be a blind idiot?” Erich said out loud to the
child. “Can you even hear me? Smile or do something, or they will
kill you.”

There was no answer, nor would there
ever be. To imagine existing within such a life was beyond the
limits of human thought. Yet there it was, sprawled our hideously
before him, a person only by definition systemically. Before
turning to leave, Erich looked at the child once more and sighed.
Nothing in his life, not even the church, had prepared him for the
present moment.

Walking to the elevator, his mind
slipped back to a faraway day in a treasured philosophy class in
Prague, to an ongoing debate over one’s existence, always with
Julia in attendance. Painting an example of an unwanted life
similar to the pitiful Knauer child, the professor posed a question
to the class, “Would it not have been better for the child to have
died at birth, never taken its first breath of life?”

Julia was the first to raise her hand.
“John Stuart Mill would argue no,” she proudly proclaimed. “It
would be better to have lived even for one second, taken one
breath, than never at all. Life is that precious.”