A Perfect Madness (22 page)

Julia and Eva both smiled at the irony
of such a comical moment in such a terrible time. They, too,
desperately needed to attend to their own needs, but refused to
disturb the growing warmth of their hiding place. Instead, they
would wait until the first glint of light found its way into the
woods and they were sure to be alone.

Soon the cranking of the motorcycles
could be heard, along with a slow chugging of the cold engines,
hitting and missing until they finally started. No more words were
heard from the soldiers, only loud idling, then a piercing roar as
they raced away, leaving the freezing silence of the winter night
to return. Julia and Eva sighed in relief, each listening to the
frightened sounds of their own heart. What their ears had
witnessed, both knew, was the opening act of an odyssey to come
that would defy a thousand imaginations.

The awaited light of dawn finally
broke through the woods and across the snowy fields and hills,
unchanging, as it had done for a thousand centuries. New snow had
fallen throughout the night, but not enough to cover Julia and
Eva’s zigzagging footprints through the field where they landed.
Eva stood looking back across the field, tracing the tracks until
they disappeared over a rise leading down to the woods where her
chute had taken her.

“
A two-year-old child
could find us from those tracks,” she said.

“
Yes, but we will be
gone,” Julia said, trudging through the deep snow towards the place
from where the voices came during the night.

After only sixty paces, a wide
ice-covered road spread out before them running parallel to the
woods where they had hid. The closeness surprised and frightened
Julia for a moment. But something else quickly caught her
attention. Kneeling down, she dug away with her hand loose snow by
the edge of the road and felt the hard pavement.

“
Concrete, for god’s sake,
concrete,” she said.

“
What do you mean
concrete?” Eva asked, puzzled by Julia’s comment.

“
Just that, rotting
concrete—this is a main thoroughfare,” Julia responded, anxiously
pulling the map from her pocket.

A quick glance told her what she
feared. Somehow, they had been dropped by mistake over fifteen
miles southeast from the rendezvous point instead of three. Julia
was sure that the road she was standing on led from Prague to
Nürnberg, completely bypassing Pilsen, their destination. She had
been this way before with Erich and Hiram during a summer break,
when the days were long and hot. Traveling on the worst of country
buses, they had left Prague for the rising hills and deep forest
along Germany’s border. There they would scour the forest floor for
hours, hoping to find ancient relics from the wars between the
Goths and Rome. Later, with Hiram napping, she and Erich would
wander deeper into the woods to find another Eden, where nothing
mattered except the love they would give to each other. If she and
Eva traveled far enough along the road, they would find the deep
woods, too.

“
What are you saying?” Eva
asked.

“
That we are not where we
should be. The pilot made a horrible mistake. This road goes
straight south to Nürnberg and straight north to Prague. We are in
the middle of—”

“
Shit.”

“
Yes, that’s a good word
to use for where we are,” Julia said wryly, at her friend’s
expression.

“
That explains the patrol
last night. This road is a major supply route for the German army.
We’ll look funny as hell walking down the road carrying a radio and
submachine guns strapped across our breasts,” Eva said.

“
We won’t. A little town
called Klatovy should be near to the east, a few miles
maybe.”

“
What are you
suggesting?”

“
Try and radio
headquarters for instructions first, if we can. If it’s a no go,
find Klatovy and hide out until the weather breaks.”

“
Pilsen’s out? Our
contacts are there, you know,” Eva said, showing some frustration
with the mess the pilot’s mistake had left them in.

“
I know. We’ll get there,
but I want to be alive when we do,” Julia said, trying to reassure
Eva.

Even before Julia had finished her
words, Eva had started walking back into the woods to where they
endured the night’s freezing cold. Saying nothing, she carried the
radio to the edge of the road and clicked the on switch, preparing
to call in their code names. But the radio remained silent,
attesting to the arctic coldness numbing everything around them—its
sixteen-volt batteries were frozen solid, too. Eva looked at Julia
for a second in disgust, then carried the radio back into the woods
and hid it among the deep brush, adding as cover at the last moment
two heavy limbs that had fallen nearby. At the same time, keeping
only three rations and the two pistols, Julia covered the rest of
the supplies and the Sten guns under nearby brush and snow, then
marked a nearby tree with her knife. Nothing could be done with the
tracks they had made in the heavy snow, so they decided to make
hundreds more by walking in tens of circles in the fields nearby
and cutting new paths through the woods to the road.

“
At least it will give the
Germans something to think about should they find them,” Eva
said.

“
Yes, but I would rather
have a good God melt them as soon as we leave,” Julia said in a
prayerful tone, as if such a thing might very well
happen.

Without looking back, both moved to
the edge of the road, standing without voice for a minute, each
knowing what lay before them, how the odds of their surviving had
changed. Though this was their homeland, with the war on they would
come as strangers to the small villagers and peasants, draped in
suspicion. Some would welcome and feed and clothe them, they knew,
but many would avoid them. Others would betray them to the Germans
for a small handful of extra rations, or gladly kill them should
they be known to be Jews. Then they would proudly show the Germans
what they had done, not for a small handful of extra rations, but
from pure hate.

Julia stepped forward gingerly on the
frozen highway, testing her footing, but could take only a few slow
steps without risking a fall. Eva fared no better, having fallen to
her knees twice trying to navigate on the slippery surface. Julia
quickly pointed to the dense thicket of trees that seemed to be
running for miles ahead along the side of the road.

“
The road is too icy. We
will make better time hiking through the woods,” she said, knowing
they would probably freeze to death before the Germans found
them.

***

SIXTEEN

Erich, Brandenburg, 1941

W
hen Erich arrived at
Görden Hospital, the maddening rush of activity he had expected to
see in such a large, prestigious state institution seemed strangely
absent to him. Empty patient rooms lined the long, dimly lit halls,
and the flurry of nurses and orderlies scurrying about was missing.
Everything was dirty, not spotless as one would hope to find in a
hospital. Nothing was as it should be, and that greatly bothered
him. Walking to the nearest ward station where a lone nurse stood
busily arranging and rearranging a small stack of medical files on
an otherwise empty desk, Erich introduced himself.

“
I am Herr Dr. Erich
Schmidt. Where is the administration office, please?”

“
Yes, Herr Doctor, we were
expecting you yesterday. The office is at the end of the hall, to
the right. I believe some of the staff are meeting there
now.”

Erich nodded and turned to leave, but
stopped after a few steps and looked back at the nurse and the
small number of file folders on her desk.

“
Where are your patients?
You have so many empty beds?” he asked.

“
I don’t know, Herr
Doctor, we do have a few, some new ones will be admitted tomorrow.
That’s all I have been told.”

Erich nodded again to the nurse and
walked down a narrow hall to his right, counting as he went the
number of empty beds and those with patients. Twelve and two, he
mumbled, opening the office door. A secretary, sharply dressed in a
newly pressed brown uniform blouse and skirt and wearing the Nazi
arm band, stood up stiffly when he entered.

“
I am Dr. Schmidt,
and—”

“
You were to report
yesterday, doctor,” the secretary said brusquely, interrupting
Erich.

“
I know, that’s the second
time I’ve been told that. Is there a search party out looking for
me?” Erich said teasingly. The woman was not amused and remained
silent for a moment, looking at him with disgust.

“
You are to go in Dr.
Heinze’s office now. There is a staff meeting.”

“
Dr. Heinze?”

“
Yes, Hans Heinze. He has
been appointed to direct our new special psychiatric youth
department,” the woman said proudly before walking to her desk,
indicating their conversation was over.

The name Heinze meant nothing to
Erich, but Karl Brandt’s did, who was the first person he
recognized among the large group of men gathered in the office. The
second was his father, who was sitting to the left of Brandt. To
his right sat Dr. Catel and then Dr. Schneider, who had witnessed
the killing of the Knauer child with him in Leipzig. None of the
other men were known to him, other than they were probably doctors
newly assigned to Görden. Counting himself, Erich guessed twelve
men crowded the room, as he moved to one of two empty chairs near
where his father sat. Twelve, an unlikely biblical number for an
unlikely purpose, he would later recall, thinking back on all that
took place at the meeting.

No one acknowledged his presence, not
even his father. Everyone sat staring straight ahead, their eyes
focused on a strange-looking man sitting alone away from the group,
Philipp Bouhler, the Reich Head of Hitler’s Chancellery. Erich
quickly became fascinated by the uncommon strength in the man’s
face. From the beginning, Bouhler intimidated him and everyone else
in the room, except Karl Brandt, who was Hitler’s personal
physician, a unique position that seemed to give Brandt carte
blanche wherever he went among doctors. Without saying a word,
Bouhler circulated among the group in dramatic fashion, the
original authorization for euthanizing the Knauer baby, which was
written on Hitler’s personal stationery and signed by him. In doing
so, he was essentially placing Hitler in the room with them,
directing all that was to come in the weeks and months ahead. No
one escaped his mystical presence, including Erich, who was
mesmerized for a minute by seeing Hitler’s writing and signature.
He remembered Hitler’s hypnotic eyes searching his own the day they
stood facing each other at the doors of Prague’s great castle. He
was disturbed then, but only for a short moment, by the ancient
Germanic aura Hitler could project by simply standing still and
silent and looking nowhere else but straight at you. There was no
silence in his signature, though. Its metaphysical power was there
for all to see and feel, as Erich did.

What followed afterwards from
Bouhler’s lips only verified and reinforced the uneasiness Erich
felt for even being here among such leaders in Hitler’s
Chancellery. Everything that was to be done in Görden Hospital,
beginning in one week, was to be kept secret from the public. How
was that to be possible, Erich wondered, when so many bold
announcements had been made with great fanfare that Görden was to
be the leader, the crown jewel among hospitals treating children
suffering from hereditary diseases? It was here at Görden where
these lucky children would be treated with the most advanced
scientific therapy in the world. Knowledge of such miraculous
therapy, if there were to be any, should be spread gloriously by
Germany before the entire medical world, not kept in secret. The
idea of secrecy tore away the curtains that had been protecting the
reason he had so treasured. The medical protocol outlining the
advanced therapy to be administered at Görden was to come from the
Chancellery. It would be an extension of Hitler’s original
directive authorizing the killing of the Knauer baby, and was to be
followed without exception by the doctors and the hospital. No one
in the audience listening to Bouhler misunderstood what the
ultimate end of the advanced therapy was to be. Erich was to say
hours later that Bouhler’s shocking recitation was like a page torn
from Dante’s
Inferno
, much to the displeasure of his father
who was dining with him.

Out of respect for his father’s
presence, Erich sat quiet during the tense meeting, seeking no
answers from Bouhler regarding the final therapy, though they were
there to be explored. Later, while the others mingled and fawned
over Bouhler and Brandt, trying to show their unwavering loyalty to
the Chancellery, he remained seated, isolated in thought over the
startling disclosures that had been carefully laid out before him,
and which he and the other doctors were expected to follow. He
quickly concluded that the only saving grace for him as a doctor
would be found in the way the medical decision to treat or not
treat a child was to be reached. No longer would it originate and
come from within the ancient sanctified boundaries of the
inviolable physician-patient relationship, even though it was he
who was to be in the sacred relationship. Instead, the final
decision to treat or not treat a child in a given case would come
from a special committee separated by distance from the ultimate
outcome. He would be much like a pilot disconnected from all
beneath him as he soars away high in the sky, seeing nothing of
those lying dead from the bombs he has dropped. His only duty then,
he believed, was to care for a patient according to the orders of
the committee, nothing more. Yet he knew, from what few shreds
remained of his conscience, that the final therapy to be given to a
sick child would come from his own hands, destroying, as it did,
any pretense that somehow he was not a part of the end
solution.