The Hour of the Cat (34 page)

“Bouhler asked that we give careful thought to these questions. The principle at stake was clear enough. Kindness to the weak is subversion of the strong. Compassion toward the unfit is treason to the race. Victory belongs to the merciless. What was left to determine was an efficient means of carrying it out. The Führer looked to us to show the way. He said that at least one bold practitioner had been carrying on an experiment in involuntary euthanasia for several years. He didn't reveal the location but said the experiment was still proceeding secretly and successfully. Soon, he told us, the doctor who'd conducted it would be ‘back in the Reich' and school us in the lessons he'd learned from his experience. Bouhler warned against any discussion or mention of what he'd told us outside our circle. Nothing should be committed to paper. Not yet.”

Arnheim pushed the paper toward Canaris. “I have written down what was said as best as I can remember. Perhaps you think me disloyal. I'm willing to take that risk.”

“You're touching on private discussion that, however theoretical, would have grave ramifications if made public.”

“‘Trust yourself, and you will know how to live.' Goethe wrote that. Mostly, Admiral, I have trusted others to tell me what to do. Our whole nation has been expert at taking orders. Today, however, I trust myself, my own feelings and instincts, and in that trust I find that I'm no longer a eugenicist dedicated to abetting the triumph of the fit and the strong and willing to carry out any order to that end. I'm the father of a young woman whose suffering has been increased because of my callousness. I will not under any circumstances become a willing party to her murder. I will kill myself first.”

“It's merely a conversation you were privy to, Doctor. Talk, that's all. No action has been taken.”

“Not yet.”

“Who else knows you came here?”

“No one. I'm sorry to involve you. I realize it's outside your jurisdiction. It's just that the supply of decent men seems to grow shorter by the day. I think you are one. I couldn't think of where else to go. I'm grateful to you for hearing me out. I hope, perhaps, when you've given it some thought, you might offer some advice about the best way to proceed.”

An instant after Arnheim showed himself out, Gresser returned. “General Heydrich's secretary called. The General wishes to know if you'll be riding with him in the morning.”

“Convey my regrets. I'm indisposed.” Canaris stood in front of the mantel. He ran his finger along the hull of the
Dresden
. On the voyage back to South America from Baltimore, they had been caught in a monstrous storm off Bermuda. The wind-driven swells beat the
Dresden
so relentlessly her engines choked. It seemed she might capsize but the crew got the engines fixed and the captain set her right. They rode out the rest of the storm without further incident. The next morning the navigator was incredulous at their position. “Foul weather or not,” he said, “it seems impossible we could have been blown this far off course.”

Canaris took the paper into the bathroom. Scanning Arnheim's typed summary of the meeting and the proposed extermination of Germany's mental and physical defectives, he held the paper over the toilet, put his lighter beneath, and set it afire. As the flame raced up, he turned it sideways, making sure it crumpled and burned, and dropped it in the toilet just before the fire reached his fingers. He flushed long and hard, then again.

He returned to his desk and smoked. After a few minutes, there was no longer any scent of herring. Only smoke.

Geographically, the Bronx is the odd man out amongst the five boroughs that comprise the metropolis of New York. Unlike Manhattan or Staten Island, which are enisled by water, and Brooklyn and Queens, which are part of Long Island, the Bronx is on the mainland of the United States. It is a stolid place of apartment buildings and modest homes, crowded in its southern and western regions, adjacent to Manhattan, still rural in the north and the east, but everywhere characterized by the aspirational plodding of its hard-working, if Depression-chastened inhabitants, most of whom are only one or two generations removed from the old world villages of their immigrant ancestors. Possessed of a first-class zoo and botanical gardens, several colleges and universities, one of which houses the American Hall of Fame, and a baseball stadium made famous by sports titan Babe Ruth, the Bronx has only one hotel worthy of the name. Rare is the visitor to New York who will spend more than a few hours in the Bronx, though those who do are often rewarded by the discovery of unexpected attractions.

—IAN ANDERSON,
“New York, Home to the Next World's Fair,”
World Traveler Magazine

D
UNNE LAY LOW before he made a sortie to Cassidy's. There was an old message waiting from Roberta: the Feds had let her go. He knew they had. There'd been nothing in the papers. Besides, the fish they wanted was Jerroff. Roberta was an incidental catch that could be thrown back at only a small loss or put on ice for future use. He dropped one of Hubert's slugs to call her back. No answer. He waited until Red Doyle and his cadre of transit workers were through with their meeting, then went back and spent the night at Cassidy's. Time was running out for Wilfredo. The outcome was guaranteed by New York State. Next morning, after going home to shower and change, he headed to Dr. Sparks's office. He stayed across the street until the car with Bill Huber at the wheel picked up Sparks for his tennis match. There was a different doorman on duty, older and stouter, a Santa Claus build, topped by a round, florid, clean-shaven face.

Dunne went over to him as soon as Sparks's car was out of sight. “Excuse me,” he said, “has Dr. Sparks left yet?”

“Just miss him.”

“His office still open?”

“Closed too.” The doorman's manner matched his jovial, open face. He lacked the guard-dog ardor of the area's native-born knob-pushers; also, his hand wasn't out.

Dunne thought he detected an accent. German, maybe. “Can I leave a message?”

“For sure.”

“It's for his chauffeur, Bill Huber.”

“You're friend of Huber?” The doorman scrutinized Dunne, displaying the suspicion he hadn't exhibited earlier.

“Didn't know he had any friends?”

“Ja! That the truth.”

“I'm with the Health Department. I've been sent to check why Mr. Huber has stopped his syphilis treatments.”

“Syphilis! Didn't I know that lug be the one to spread it!”

“You must know him pretty well.”

“Don't know him hardly at all. I'm Bohemian, mister, a Czech. The less I have to do with Huber and them Nazi bastards, the happier I am!”

A maid exited the building carrying a tiny white poodle that looked as if it had been coifed and primped at the beauty salon in the Savoy Plaza. “Better watch the language, Jan. Get yourself fired if you're not careful.” She put the dog on the ground.

Jan glared at her as she moved down the block with the dog in tow. “Busybodies. Maids is all busybodies, every one the same.”

“He tell you he was a Nazi?”

“Did who tell me?”

“Huber.”

“He don't tell me nothin'. I see for myself.” Jan turned his attention back to Dunne. “When Hitler started trouble over Sudetenland, the Bund march to Bohemian National Hall, break windows, shout and yell. The people inside, at a dance, are made to feel terror what might come next. Next night we Bohemians march on Yorkville Casino, and the Bund bastards are there in their
Sturmabteilung
uniforms waitin' for us. Before fight begin, the police show up and put themselves between us. And who I see with those Nazi bastards? Huber!”

“What time you expect Huber to bring the Doctor back?”

“No time soon. After the tennis, Huber usually drops Doctor at asylum and somebody drives him back later. But I tell you, mister, you want to see Huber tonight, try the Yorkville Casino. A big Bund rally is there this evening. We Czechs will be outside. Go up to that Huber in front of all them Nazi bastards and remind him about his syphilis! Ha!”

“See what I can do. Tell me, if I also had a message for Doctor Sparks, what asylum could I find him at?”

“
His
sanatorium, the one he runs. You tell him about Huber's syphilis, no?”

“I guess it wouldn't hurt.”

“Stay one minute.” Jan went into the vestibule and came back with a small package. He put on his glasses. “Look here.” He pointed at the return label. “This is the place you find him.” He read the address aloud: “Hermes Sanatorium, East Tremont Avenue, Bronx, New York.”

“A hospital?”

“A home the Doctor runs, an asylum. He's quiet about it. He don't want attention.”

“There a street number?”

“You know the Bronx?”

“Enough.”

“It's east of Westchester Square, some blocks east. I asked him about it once. He say only it's for them defective or sick in the head.”

Dunne tried to slip a bill into Jan's hand, but he pushed it away. “Get rid of that Huber and be me who pay you! Doctor Sparks is a German too, but a generous one. Twenty-five dollar he tip every Christmas! The reason he have a swine like Huber around, I never understand!”

“No accounting for taste.”

“But such rotten taste in such a fine gentleman!”

 

 

A handful of people were on the subway platform. Dunne bought the papers at the newsstand. He put a penny in a gum machine bolted to an iron pillar. The machine swallowed the penny but didn't dispense any gum. He gave it several hard bangs with the heel of his hand, but still no gum. He got on the first train that pulled in and jumped off as the doors closed. No one else did. It didn't seem he was being tailed.

The next train was crowded. After several stops he got a seat, buried himself in the newspapers, and didn't look up again until 138th Street, in the Bronx. Directly across the car was a woman in a cheap housedress and a small red hat. She had a kid on either side. The smaller one, who looked about six or seven, rested his head in her lap. The other, a gangly, skinny teenager, stared at his shoes. Both boys wore yarmulkes. The woman had a tired face, not old, not homely, just tired.

She caught Dunne looking at them. He went back to the papers, skimming pages he'd already read. The train idled in the station. The lights dimmed. There were places in the city where the Depression mood was lifting. A World's Fair in Flushing, new roads and housing being built, a revived sense of hope, the promise of change, any change. But not in the subway. Here, the accumulated pain and despair of the past decade had been sucked down with the exhaust from the streets. Broken dreams and discarded ambitions mingled with the debris of candy wrappers, apple cores, and half-chewed pretzels rotting in the filthy, stagnant water in the troughs between the tracks. The lights went out completely, then came on again.

The woman across the way rested the back of her head against the green metal wall of the car. She appeared to Dunne to be asleep.
Sweet dreams, lady:
a momentary respite from a lifetime of pennies put away with no effect, gobbled up by the machinery of history, by high-sounding theories that couldn't erase the ordinary miseries of lost jobs, savings, aspirations, an unemployed husband who sat around the house for years until one day he put on his hat and coat, went out the door, and never came back. Sleep was the cheapest escape of all, as long as your dreams took you to a better place. The train left the tunnel at Whitlock Avenue and rattled on elevated tracks high across the Bronx River. The woman woke and gently nudged the sleeping child on her lap. She and the two boys got off at Elder Avenue.

The train was almost empty when it pulled into the Hugh Grant Circle station. It idled once more. Dunne got up and stretched. The Catholic Protectory, which used to be clearly visible from the station's height, was gone. So, too, were the thick forest that bordered it on the east and the pond where the Protectory boys swam. A fleet of bulldozers was busy leveling the ground. Great clouds of dust swirled around them. New streets were being carved out. A parade of tall redbrick apartment buildings marched off into the distance.

To the right, two bulldozers were flattening the hill above where Brother Flavian's garden had been. They went back and forth, erasing the spot where he fell asleep each day after lunch. Chair turned south, toward the sun, he'd sit slack and still, except for the one time he rose from his chair, shielding his eyes, shouting something in French that the boys didn't understand. He gathered his cassock in his hand and ran in the direction of Walker Avenue and the Morris Park Racecourse. They dropped their hoes and rakes and called after him, but he kept running until he reached the crest of the hill. He pointed at the sky and shouted,
Voila! Voila!
Then they saw it too, a speck that rapidly grew larger as it approached. It circled above, drew near, and came so close they could make out the bushy mustache, goggles, and high-laced boots of the man at the controls. Round and round he went. The uproar of the engine that drove the propellers on his double-winged aeroplane drowned their cries and cheers.

That night, in their dreams, instead of sex with naked, willing girls, there was the sensation of hovering above the earth, soaring above the clouds and leaving the Protectory forever. Day after day, they searched the sky for that aeroplane. Vinnie Coll swore he'd find where it was kept, steal it, fly out west, and start a gang. “Swoop in and out in my aeroplane,” he bragged. “Them hicks will never know what hit 'em.”

Not long after, the New York Aeronautic Society rented the abandoned racecourse at Morris Park for the city's first “air show.” More than 20,000 people attended. Biplanes and triplanes filled the sky above the Protectory. The smell of gasoline was everywhere. A plane was forced to make an emergency landing and ran over Brother Flavian's prized roses. “No good will come of such machines,” he fumed. “They are the devil's invention!” By the time the air show was over, they barely looked up when an aeroplane passed over. Didn't take much notice again until France and the Argonne offensive. The German planes spit bullets everywhere. American and British planes counterattacked, and the sky was smudged with the black smoke of wounded and dying aircraft. The devil's work. In the trenches below, there were no more dreams of flying but of sex with naked, willing French girls between clean, dry sheets.