A Perfect Madness (31 page)

Maria had returned to a more pleasant
mood, too, though she had heard nothing from Martin in over two
months. But the invasion of Russia was going well, and she believed
he would be home soon. One sunny May afternoon, she left the
hospital on her break to bask in the surprising warmth of the sun
after such a cold winter. Going to the rose garden, she found Erich
sitting there reading a tattered copy of Nietzsche’s
The Gay
Science
. Maria knew nothing of the man, nor of any of the other
great German philosophers, and always found talk of philosophy
boring. Erich loved Nietzsche, though, particularly the poems in
the book, because they held special memories for him. He would read
them for hours with Julia, trying to grasp the completeness of
their meaning, which he knew would open a window to Nietzsche’s own
disturbed soul. In the end, they would always find themselves
sailing together above the world on the sheer beauty of his
words.

“
May I sit with you for a
moment?” Maria asked. “The day seems so special.”

Erich nodded but continued reading.
Maria had found him different when he was away from the East Ward
and the hospital. She had been with him at several social
gatherings of the staff, and he always seemed a different person,
at least to her. It was as if there were two minds wrapped
carefully together in his body, each one choosing a separate place
in time to let itself be known. Franz, and those like him, were
always the same, preaching the gospel of the Third Reich, which by
now had become boring. To her, there was a certain strange softness
about Erich that made him different from most men, but it kept him
weak also, which she didn’t like. Few men, she knew, would be found
sitting in a rose garden reading poems.

“
Read me one of the
shorter poems and tell me what it means,” Maria said on an impulse,
startling Erich for a second.

“
I would like to but I
can’t—there’s too much history tied up in this book, which I
treasure very much.”

Maria measured Erich’s words for a
second before speaking again.

“
What was she
like?”

“
Who?”

“
The woman you read these
poems to,” Maria said, looking wistfully at him.

Shaken by Maria’s perception, Erich
closed the book and sat silent for a few moments, staring at a
particular small rose that seemed to be struggling against the
larger blossoms for its own place in the sun. “Your skin is softer
than the petals of a rose,” he had recited to Julia once from a
silly poem he had written for her. But she didn’t laugh at him, and
he loved her even more for it.

Erich looked over at Maria, who was
sitting next to him, and saw that she was serious with her
question.

“
She was beautiful. That’s
all I can say—beautiful.”

“
Where is she now?” Maria
asked, pleased that he had finally responded.

“
I don’t know. We were in
Prague together at the medical school before the war
started.”

“
Was she from Germany like
you?” Maria asked, taken with the romantic overtones of this sudden
conversation with Erich.

Crossing his arms and looking around
the garden slowly, Erich sighed aloud, as if captured by the
completeness of the roses before him. It seemed a lifetime since he
had talked with anyone about this remarkable woman he loved so
dearly.

“
Her name is Julia. She is
not German but a Czech—and a Jew.”

Maria’s face reddened when she heard
the last word and she quickly looked away from Erich. Had she been
given a thousand guesses to describe Julia, none would have
included the word Jew. He seemed so German to her, the kind that
would have no place in his heart for a Jew. Erich felt her
misplaced embarrassment and wished he had said nothing, though it
felt strangely good to him to have spoken Julia’s name again
openly, not covering it within the silence of his mind.

“
She’s a good woman, I’m
sure,” Maria said, turning back to Erich, “but not one I could ever
have imagined you would love.”

“
We will let this stop
here. She was beautiful, that is all, and I loved her,” Erich said,
rising from the garden bench and starting back to the hospital,
leaving Maria alone.

“
Dr. Schmidt,” Maria
yelled to him. “I will tell no one, never, I promise.”

Erich stopped and looked back at
Maria, her face still bright red, but with tears in her
eyes.

“
Thank you, Maria. See, we
have become friends after all,” he said, then walked into the
hospital.

When he arrived the next morning,
Maria seemed rested and was busily attending to three new children
who had been brought to the hospital by their parents during the
night. As a group they had spent the night crying and sleeping and
rocking their children, refusing to go home until they had talked
with him about their children. After speaking with Maria, Erich
went to them and told them they must leave.

“
Your children will be
fine and well cared for. I will keep you informed of their
progress,” he lied, looking each parent in the face, as he had
others before them asking the same questions.

“
We have heard that all
the children brought here die,” one man said, his voice
quivering.

“
Rumors, that is all,
rumors,” Erich said firmly, though slightly shaken by the man’s
sudden accusation. “Some have died from unexpected complications,
but only a few. You must leave, your children will be well cared
for. We will notify you when they are ready to go home.”

One by one the parents returned to the
rooms where their children lay, kissed them several times, then
walked slowly back by Erich, thanking and blessing him for what
they thought he would do. After they were gone, Erich decided to
tell Dr. Heinze and the Chancellery about the rumors he had heard
and left Maria to tend to the children. When he entered the office,
he found Franz Kremer talking with Dr. Heinze and immediately
turned around to leave.

“
Come in and tell me
quickly what you have to say. Dr. Kremer and I are busy,” Dr.
Heinze said gruffly, red faced as usual.

Erich sat down and told them in detail
about the surprising complaints of the parents and the rumors they
brought with them and asked if the Chancellery knew of them, too.
After he was through, Dr. Heinze looked to Franz as if they were
passing a secret between them, then looked for a moment at Erich,
smiling as he did.

“
The answer you want is
yes. An official letter from the Chancellery is going out ordering
a stop to the program. So officially, no more children are to be
euthanized,” Dr. Heinze said, still smiling.

Stunned by what he was hearing, Erich
started to speak of his gladness at the news, when Dr. Heinze
continued.

“
We will continue our
program, though in a clandestine way, with the children in the
hospital and any that might be brought to us, until everything is
calm again.”

Dr. Heinze then walked over and put
his hands on Franz’s shoulders, his eyes full of pride as if he
were his own son.

“
Dr. Kremer has been
elevated to a senior status and is to be rewarded by assuming an
important post at Auschwitz.”

“
Auschwitz? What hospital
is at Auschwitz?” Erich asked, puzzled by Dr. Heinze’s
actions.

Dr. Heinze said nothing, delighted in
Erich’s ignorance. Feeling uneasy with the silence that suddenly
had seized the room, Erich stood up to leave. As he did, Franz half
nodded to him and said sarcastically, “You still agree that we must
cooperate, don’t you, Erich?”

“
Why do you ask? My word
is as good as yours.”

“
Things may become heavy
at Auschwitz, and you should be ready to work with me should that
happen. That is all.”

Erich looked once more at Franz’s
sickening face and left the office.

He would call his father tonight and
uncover the truth about what had taken place. Franz had somehow
gained the ear of someone in the Chancellery to bring about such an
important promotion at age twenty-nine. No word would come from his
father, though Erich waited late into the night for the operators
to try to find him. Sleep would not come to him either, until the
early morning hours when he finally surrendered his mind to it
while writing and rewriting imaginary love letters to Julia. His
words to her, though she might never read them, calmed his fears,
brightening his heart and bringing hope that the terrible things he
had been doing would finally end. But later, with a new day before
him, he knew that the only thing certain in his life was the will
to live. Nothing else really mattered.

***

TWENTY-TWO

Erich, Görden

T
he village people
called them “the crazies,” and some maybe were, but most weren’t.
They were just trying to figure out how to get along in a crowded
world that was way too full of dos and don’ts. For the most part
they were pitifully silly people who ran around shaming their
family, so they were told. It didn’t matter, though, whether they
were just silly or insane, all of the crazies would be swept up and
tossed into the Chancellery’s new cleansing machines for dirty
genes. Maria saw their machine first, leaving the hospital after a
tiresome day doing little. Taking the short way to her apartment
through the grounds of the old abandoned city prison, she came upon
a crew of SS laborers working feverishly around a rear exit door.
Inquisitive by nature, she stopped and questioned one worker for
answers about the new construction, only to be greeted with stone
silence. No one else would look at her, so she left, reminding
herself to ask Erich in the morning about the strange work taking
place in a building no longer in use.

Erich knew nothing about the work at
the old penitentiary. For some unknown reason, the muted voices of
the construction workers had bothered her throughout the evening,
as if some new unexplainable event was just over the horizon. With
his ward empty of children, Erich had busied himself helping Dr.
Bracht dissect and study the few remaining brains of children still
stored in the hospital’s laboratory. They had learned nothing, but
the work was exciting and reaffirmed a sense of purpose in what
they were about as doctors. Someday, somewhere, someone would find
the soul’s portal to the brain, the link to our immortality, they
believed. The pineal gland had been Descartes’s secret connecting
door, but he was terribly wrong, Erich knew. And since then, no one
really thought about it anymore or cared. Except for a few
psychiatrists, science had lost its taste for the
metaphysical.

Badgered into visiting the
construction site by Maria, Erich went with her to the old prison
after they ate lunch together again in the rose garden. She had not
exaggerated. Workers were busily cleaning the grounds and planting
new grass and flowers along the walkway leading to a freshly
painted exit door that was now the entrance. The prior dreary
starkness of the area had been replaced by groupings of benches and
chairs, each with a small religious statue standing in their midst.
Even the ten-foot wall along the rear of the prison looked bright
and new with its rusted iron gate removed, providing a pleasant and
unguarded openness to the entire scene. Erich could not help but be
impressed by the prison’s renaissance. He might seek his own quiet
moments there; however, he wondered what had moved the state to
prettify such a dismal place.

Inside everything was surprisingly new
also. The dingy and mildewed walls of the dark hall leading into
the prison’s quarters were colorfully coated with a mixture of
shades and hues, giving a welcoming brightness to anyone entering.
To the left was a large and long rectangular room with three
workers busily installing telephone lines and new light fixtures.
Two large tables with chairs sat at the front, with the remainder
of the room empty. Two large pictures of Hitler next to a smaller
one of Jesus adorned the walls.

But it was the room directly across
the hall that intrigued Erich the most, where a shower room
approximately nine by fifteen feet, and nine feet high with aqua
tiled walls had been constructed for arriving inmates to bathe in.
A pipe was fitted along the walls running to several showerheads,
mounted high on the front wall. Nothing seemed strange to Erich
until he noticed that the pipe was dotted with two rows of holes
almost invisible to the naked eye, running the length of the pipe.
He also noticed that the wall was empty of the necessary fixtures
for turning on the showers. He supposed that the controls could be
elsewhere, but that would be odd. Could there be a different
purpose for the room, he wondered, other than as a shower room?
While he didn’t know the full truth behind this moment, he felt the
reality of it, and shook his head in disbelief.

“
Are you okay?” Maria
asked.

“
We should leave now,” he
said in a weak voice. “We probably shouldn’t be here.”

Following Maria from the room, Erich
closed the door, which seemed unusually heavy to him. Pausing for a
moment, he saw a small glass peephole for observing all that was to
happen inside the room. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of
an omen, Erich knew. No one would ever take a shower
there.