In War Times (21 page)

They passed two telephones set in the wall, a water cooler, an office in which three professionally dressed women and one man in a business suit tended typewriters and file cabinets. Sam glanced inside an open door. Inside, two men were on their knees, working on a diesel generator.

Then they were walking alongside a block-long glass window. On the other side of the glass an enormous room housed men and women standing at long tables. The women’s hair was bound up in white scarves. Men and women alike wore identical gray jumpsuits. They worked quickly and under heavy guard, their faces blank, assembling some kind of electronic component, twisting wires with pliers.

The glass room had been built inside a huge tunnel. He could see through the room, which he assumed had been built to protect delicate electronics, to the bare rocks of the tunnel beyond, and had to force himself to keep his own face expressionless. The whole thing seemed like a dream.

On a long wooden skid, a gigantic rocket was being assembled by a group of skeletal men. Some were ascending ladders; others lit the cave with brief flares from blowtorches. And in that light he saw a terrible thing: three men and two women hanging by their necks from a crane, their faces, in death, black, their bodies a background to what looked like ceaseless labor in the service of a war others had perpetrated, sweeping the entire world before it, crushing them in the physical manifestation of beliefs that were, in themselves, invisible as any thought, any religion, any emotion.

Sam was sure that their escort did not notice, as he opened the door for them, the anguish suffusing Hadntz’s face for just a second. Even she seemed stunned at the vastness of this enterprise. Her expression echoed the hopelessness of the skull-like faces bent over their work. It all washed through him as if he were one of the hapless, naked humans falling from the ark of the world into the mouth of a volcano. The air inside was cool, clean, and scentless. No one spoke; the only sounds were those of the setting down of one tool for another, the occasional clatter of a search for the right bolt or wire to be plucked from the trays next to each worker.

He was startled when Bette offered him a clean white handkerchief. He had not realized that he had tears on his face. Wink stared grimly forward, and they were stopped in another squalid, bombed village. Starving children crowded around the closed windows of the car.

“Are you able to continue?” she asked, and followed this with technical questions about what he recalled concerning the work of the prisoners.

He returned to the room.

He and Hadntz had walked up and down the lines until they came to one old man with a straight spine and a nearly fleshless face which nevertheless held the vestiges of laugh lines. He was bald and wore no scarf; on one arm was tattooed a number, and his eyes were such a dark brown that they looked midnight-black, like Hadntz’s.

Hadntz pointed to him and the escort signaled to one of the guards. The man was taken to the side of the room.

She was allowed to choose five others. They were all relatively elderly, except for one teenaged girl who could not maintain an impassive face. She blinked rapidly when she met Hadntz’s eyes, then quickly looked down at her hands, which had not stopped moving in their assembly of weapons.

“After we left she talked about herd animals.”

“Herd animals?”

“Yes. The refugees were in the back. She seemed determined not to talk about them, as if I might be a spy too.”

As Sam and Hadntz passed through the gate he gripped the steering wheel tightly to keep his hands from trembling. She had seemed quite composed; he could no longer tell what her emotions might be. “Keep going,” she said. “Then turn right as soon as we pass through the village.”

In the rearview mirror, he saw that the prisoners were standing, holding on to the wood slats surrounding the truck bed. The girl took off her scarf and sat on one of the bales of hay in the back of the truck. Her dark hair tendrilled in the wind; her face was turned toward the sky. The cab of the truck smelled like hay, which was scattered on the floor as if tracked in by someone who used the truck to feed cows, and old cigarette smoke. Hadntz took a few deep breaths and turned her head briefly to glance through the rear window.

Sam said, “Who—”

“Quiet.”

After a few minutes, she said, in a strangely normal voice, “I have been thinking a lot about herd animals.”

“Herd animals?” He was so stunned by his recent glimpse of hell that he just fell into her conversation, unable to formulate the questions he needed to ask.

She was looking out her window, her face turned away from him. Maybe she was just casting around for some way to deal with the enormity of what they’d just seen.

“There are so many of them. Flocks, herds, schools. Among groups of mammals, there is supremacy. The wolf pack. A herd of horses. The leader of a herd of elephants is always a female. The village elects a mayor. The Indians have a chief.”

“The Germans have a Fuehrer.”

“Yes.” Her voice now sounded muffled as if by a cold. “And it seems to me that they are following him without thought. He is to them as the leader is to a wolf pack, the stallion to the herd. The Russians do not feel the same way about Stalin, but they have less choice. The Germans have accepted Hitler completely. Each new, slightly more outrageous direction is embraced. It comes from Him. It must be Good. He has replaced God in their minds—infallible, all-knowing. Very necessary. Vital to them. As if they were just waiting for him to come along. He has created in them a very strong sense of identity, one in which those who do not agree with it are afraid to challenge.”

“Did you know what we would see there?”

She looked at him directly. Her eyes were red; she had been weeping. “Yes. I have seen other places like this as well. It is happening all over Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia. And worse. Why? How can people treat one another this way? What I am thinking about is how to remove or change this human propensity. What if we could somehow change this urge to be like all the others and to follow a leader blindly?”

“The results might be chaotic.”

“Oh, of course!” Suddenly, she was screaming, face twisted, eyes blazing. “That would be so much worse than what we have now! I could only rescue these six from death and it has taken me a year to do so! Six people from thousands, brutally murdered by the pack at the direction of the master! They are forced to make instruments of death until they die of exhaustion and starvation, forced to do so by those who are pleasing their master—and keeping themselves from the same fate.”

“But—your device. Can’t you—”

“It is not working,” she said, flatly. “Or…it does not work as I thought it might. At times, everything closes. Rolls up.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed. “There are dimensions…it has to do with resonance, with the vibrational qualities of subatomic particles. The same numbers I have given you, the same ideas, expressed mathematically. I have made them as simple as possible, reduced them as much as I have been able to, at this point. It has to do with how life itself took shape, the physics and the chemistry of cells themselves, as pure matter.” She smiled slightly. “That is, in theory. In practice, the experiences I’ve had using the technology based on my theories have…given me a perspective that frightens me.”

“I still have no idea how it might work,” he said. “Or even, really, what it might do. I only hoped that, by now—”

There was anguish in her voice; in her clenched fists. “You are right. Of course you are right. I should have been able to do more. I am still working on it. Have been working on it. It is just hard to know
what to do first
. There is too much to do; too many terrible things to deal with.” Then she seemed to quite deliberately unclench her fists, splayed her fingers in and out as a pianist might, and finally rested her hands in her lap. “It is why I have been thinking about herd animals.”

“How would you change this herd propensity?” He spoke in a very calm tone of voice, one he might use with an upset child.

“Genetically.” Her voice shook, but soon became even. “All the secrets of being and of behavior are locked within us. We are not simply apes with bigger brains, and even apes are not simple. Nothing is simple. The actions we take are determined from within. You really need to read Darwin. We breed animals to isolate certain characteristics. I want to understand the roots of our own characteristics.”

“Turn the world into your breeding pen? Isn’t that what Hitler is trying to do?”

She said heatedly, “My way would not involve murder. Instead of unlocking the secrets of matter to cause world-ending weapons, why not try to figure out why we do certain things, and how we might change that? How can we cure our own stupidity? It would be more satisfying to me than holding the power of a million suns in my hand.”

“Are you the one who wanted me to come here? Was this your idea?”

“Yes. I made a deal with the British to get you here. This is something that you needed to see. This is what is really happening. This is what we are fighting. This is what
you
are fighting.”

“But I’m not sure—”

Unexpectedly, she reached over and patted his arm. “I know. My device seems outlandish, impossible.”

“I mean, I’m not even sure what it’s supposed to do.”

“Read the papers again. It’s all there.”

“But there are all kinds of unproven assertions, such as the function and structure of DNA, to begin with.”

“They are true, though. Remember? I included several papers that show the latest discoveries.”

“I need to get some of them translated,” he admitted. “I’m not even sure in what language some of them are written. But still, how do you use that information, even if it’s true?”

“Someday I hope to be able to teach you. When there is more time. Or you can begin at the beginning yourself, as I did, and prove it for yourself.”

They did not return the way they had come. She had several sets of papers and passes, and stiffened every time they encountered another vehicle. Once, on a remote part of the road, she had him stop and sent him back to the passengers with a loaf of bread, urging him to be quick, just toss it in. A cold wind bit at his face. The passengers were huddled together on the floor of the cab, covered by straw. The girl nodded as she reached out a thin hand and took the loaf. The sky had thickened with gray clouds; he smelled snow in the air and he jumped back into the cab.

At dusk, they drove through a small town where evening lights glowed, illuminating the inhabitants of houses. Then the remote road was lined by a dense pine forest.

“They must be getting cold,” he said.

“I cannot risk seeming to treat them well if we are stopped. There must be no suspicion.”

“We’re out in the woods. Don’t you think—”

“Turn…here.”

“Where?”

“Stop. Back up. There.”

He had not even noticed the narrow track through the pines.

It was pitch-black now. She reluctantly allowed him to turn on his slit-covered headlights. Snow began to fall, and around them the tall pines whipped back and forth in the wind. “Keep going,” she urged, when he suggested setting up a camp for the night. “It’s not much farther.” After half an hour they came to a cottage in a clearing.

“Come, come,” she said, helping them jump down from the truck. The girl fell and Hadntz helped her up; embraced her. The girl began to cry. They hugged while the others made their way to the front door, which was open, holding their rags around them tightly.

The cottage was unused and dusty, smelling of the pine wood of which it was built. Sam lit candles and started a fire as the rescued people talked and laughed and wept. He assumed they were speaking Romany; it was the musical language he’d heard in London. One of the crates in the truck held a feast: a ham, bread, and wine, although Hadntz would not let them eat much. They had been starved and must recover slowly. She instructed Sam to boil water over the fire in a pot hung from an iron arm, into which he shredded ham. After the cut-up potatoes were cooked in the same water, he smashed it all together into a gruel.

The crate also held a fiddle. The old man picked up the instrument and sat on a stool by the firelight.

He began to tune the violin, but rested it on his lap frequently. By now the others lay near the fire on pallets which Sam had assembled from quilts in the crate, and all seemed asleep. Hadntz tried gently to take the violin and urged him to a place on the floor, but he shook his head violently and continued to tune.

When he was finally satisfied, he drew poignant harmonies from the instrument with the sweep of his bow. His face was impassive, but his tears flowed freely and glimmered in the firelight. Sleet beat against the roof. Sam went to the place in his being where Keenan now lived.

By the time they were finished, Bette had recorded many details: the number of prisoners in that room, the presumed population of the barracks above, the thickness of the walls, the number and placement of guards, the location of the camp, the town that flanked it. He had already given much of this information to the British, so he assumed they had not shared it with the Americans. Also, they had not asked nearly as many questions about what Hadntz had said.

“How did she get the requisition to remove the workers?” asked Bette.

“I don’t know. We spent several days going to various German offices in Paris. She’s resourceful.”

Wink’s comment from the front seat was a hearty snort. Sam couldn’t put into words what he felt: that Hadntz was the soul of Europe, an amalgam of nationalities, intellect, culture. She absorbed the tribalism, the darkness, the deep enmities and purified all of it, circulating it through some deep, clear, groundwater of being.

He told Major Elegante about their similar trip to the V-2 plant at a camp named Dora, near Nordhausen, where workers were dwarfed by the massive rockets, as he had told the British, but there were things he did not tell her.

He did not tell her that Hadntz was thinking of her device now as something more organic and less mechanical, more invasive and intimate and less of the exterior world. He did not tell her Hadntz’s speculations about the quantum aspects of consciousness, which took her a good hour, during which the mountains became increasingly shadowed by gathering storm clouds and wind buffeted the truck and those in back dropped out of sight of his mirror to huddle on the floor, but that was mainly because he wasn’t sure he understood enough about it to repeat it.