The Trial of Fallen Angels (22 page)

30

L
uas didn’t answer when I knocked on his office door. Instead, the being from the Courtroom appeared in the hallway to inform me that the High Jurisconsult was occupied and would see me after I had met with my first client. I was to go to my office and wait.

I did as I was told, and soon the being from the Courtroom arrived with a postulant, closing the door behind on the way out and leaving us alone in the office. I had decided beforehand to keep my back to the postulant and face the wall behind my desk. I wanted to postpone the exploration of my client’s past and attempt first to communicate under present conditions, one fellow soul to another lost from a common home and left to a common fate. I would not lightly rob my clients of their memories, or demand that they wait in the other room while I negotiated eternity with their Creator. They would be given the opportunity to participate in their own defense, to explain on their own terms what had happened during their lives and why.

So there we sat for a moment, my first ecclesiastical client and I, together on the precipice of eternity.

“Are you afraid?” I asked.

“Yes,” a male voice responded hesitantly.

“I understand,” I said. “I will do everything I can to help you.”

But I was afraid too. Every lawyer has doubts, and what was at stake in the Courtroom of Shemaya was far greater than in any courtroom on earth.

How can I bear another’s burdens when I cannot even bear my own? How dare I attempt to reconcile another’s accounts when my own debts remain unpaid?

“I don’t think anybody can help me,” he said. “I have done a terrible thing.”

His voice was barely audible, resigned, without hope. I could not allow such despair to go unanswered, no matter what demons haunted me and no matter what he had done. Not only did his plea stir my compassion, but it made plain for me, as if there all along, that this was the call I had prepared my entire life to answer. This was the reason I had been chosen to defend souls at the Final Judgment. It seemed at that moment as though the mystery of my own life, and afterlife, had been revealed unexpectedly in the suffering of another soul. I would devote myself to rescuing my clients from the pit of desolation and injustice. I would redeem them before the throne of God.

With the joy of this revelation, I could no longer keep my back toward the soul across from me. I yearned to see his face in the light of truth, and to learn everything I could about his life, both the good and the bad. I would bless, not judge, and do everything in my power to guarantee him every benefit and annihilate every doubt. I would speak out in the Courtroom with the partisan voice of an advocate and risk even my own punishment to win justice. I would never allow to happen to this soul what had happened to Toby Bowles, Amina Rabun, and my uncle Anthony.

These were the promises I made to myself when I turned to face my client—promises that, perhaps, I had made years ago, as a young girl, when a conveyor chain disfigured my body and reconfigured my life. I knew now that I had been brought to Shemaya to fulfill those sacred vows and, perhaps, to secure my own redemption.

But as I turned to greet this beautiful, helpless soul upon whom I would lavish my devotion, my love, my eternity, I was met by a very different kind of face. It was the wicked face of a killer, not the innocent face of a victim.

No . . . no, not him. Please . . . please, dear God, not him!

But it was too late.

The man who murdered me had died and gone to Shemaya.

His soul now roamed inside me. And I held his fate in my hands.

PART IV

31

O
tto Rabun Bowles understood none of his tumultuous family history as he sat dazed on the sideline during halftime of the football game after being hit viciously for two quarters by children nearly twice his size. He pleaded with his father not to be sent back into the game. But his father, Tad Bowles, responded as his own father had responded to him as a boy, by belittling Ott for acting like a baby and ordering him out onto the field.

This is when Toby Bowles, Ott’s grandfather, made his surprise appearance. Toby had been estranged from Tad for more than a decade. As a result, Ott had never seen him, and never would see him again. The old man and former perpetrator of such callousness climbed down from the bleachers to intervene on his grandson’s behalf by asking Tad to give the boy a break. Ott was all bruises and wonderment at this fallen angel about whom he had heard such terrible things, but who bore such a remarkable resemblance to his own father. Toby suddenly seemed like his only friend in the world, and Ott loved him on contact.

But Tad became enraged. How dare his father show up uninvited, and how dare he criticize him? Harsh words were exchanged between the two men—words that should have been spoken fifteen years earlier when there was context in which to understand them and love left to heal them, but that landed now like hammers on the firing pins of revolvers. When Tad could bear no more and restrain himself no longer, he shoved the old man—hard enough to cause him to lose his balance and fall to the ground in front of Ott and the other spectators.

Ott’s eyes narrowed into slits of hatred for his father. Stunned and embarrassed, Toby used the bleachers to support himself, got up, and walked away, never to be seen by Ott again. Four years later, Tad’s mother, Claire, called to report that Toby had died of a heart attack. The opportunity for Ott to forge a bond with his paternal grandfather had come and gone.

—

AND SO IT
was that the lifetime of memories contained within the soul of the man who murdered me became a sort of Rosetta stone, enabling me slowly, painstakingly, to piece together the connections between his life, my life, and the lives of the souls I had met in Shemaya—as Nana had told me I must if I was ever to escape this place. Bizarrely, I needed Ott Bowles’s memories to guide me through the afterlife, because I had been unwilling since arriving in Shemaya to access my own memories about my death, and Sarah’s. And because even if I had remembered everything, I could not have possibly known how deeply interconnected my life had been to so many different people.

I was stunned to learn that Toby Bowles, the first soul I had seen tried in Shemaya, a man whom I had never met during my life, was responsible not only for the existence of my husband and, ultimately, my daughter—by saving my mother-in-law’s life in Kamenz—but also for the existence of my own murderer—by being Ott Bowles’s grandfather. Yet this was merely the first of many astonishing connections I discovered between my life and the life of Ott Bowles—connections that had brought us fatefully together in life and, now, death.

Ott Bowles’s parents met in a nightclub in New Jersey where Ott’s mother, Barratte Rabun, age thirty-eight and still quite attractive, served drinks. Many years later, Barratte explained to her son that something in his father’s sad brown eyes and embarrassed smile made her want to hold and protect him. At twenty-six years of age, he vaguely reminded her of her older brother, who had been executed by Russian soldiers in Kamenz. He seemed different from the other young men at the bar who, having finally been given a voice by the alcohol they consumed, had nothing to say but “Feed me,” “Where’s the bathroom?” and “Sleep with me.”

Even so, Barratte’s attraction to Tad Bowles began to fade when she became pregnant with Ott. In truth, until the morning she delivered Ott, she had viewed all men, including Tad, only as game to be hunted and collected, stalking them like a poacher and mounting their dumb, wondering heads on the paneled walls of her memory. After Ott’s birth, men in general, and Tad in particular, were not worth even this to her. She had harvested what little the male of the species offered the world—that precious fertilizer they squandered so recklessly. Now young Ott became her finest trophy, her beginning and her end. Each contraction of her womb breathed new life into her long-dead family, whose existence depended upon her sacred labor. Not for one day during Ott’s childhood would she allow him to forget that the survival of the Rabuns of Kamenz depended upon
him
. He was the irreplaceable link to all those who had come before, and to all those who would come after.

Ott readily accepted this responsibility, but his father, in no way a Rabun, was never let in on the important secret. Until the lawsuit Bill Gwynne and I filed against Amina and Barratte Rabun on behalf of my mother-in-law, Katerine Schrieberg-Wolfson. The startling revelations in the complaint about the Rabuns of Kamenz came as a complete shock to Tad Bowles. Barratte had told him only that most of the members of her family were killed during the war, that she inherited a modest sum, and that a cousin in Buffalo with whom she no longer had a relationship had helped her escape from Germany before the Soviets closed the Iron Curtain. That Barratte’s father and uncle had been wealthy, that they had accumulated this wealth from the death camps and the extortion of Jews, that Barratte had been raped by Soviet soldiers and her family murdered, and that she had hidden such a history from him—all this left Tad feeling both frightened and betrayed.

Yet the scare also had the effect of soothing Tad’s wounded ego, for Barratte’s lack of emotion in the marriage could now be explained by reasons other than his own inadequacies. He had married a fraud, and perhaps much worse, so it was he who pressed for a divorce even as he purchased his fourth new automobile in as many years with tainted Rabun money. Of course, Barratte would have divorced Tad eventually, just as Amina had divorced George Meinert. When Tad hinted that he might seek custody of Ott, however, she threatened to destroy him. He knew she could and agreed to give her custody. One week after Ott’s twelfth birthday, Barratte packed their things and moved from their home beside Tad’s insurance office in New Jersey to Amina’s small mansion in Buffalo to face the allegations of the lawsuit and restore her family’s name.

—

THE LAWSUIT AGAINST
Amina and Barratte Rabun was not initiated lightly by my mother-in-law. Out of profound gratitude for the risks that Amina had taken to protect her family during the war, Katerine Schrieberg-Wolfson had decided not to follow through on the threat made by her former lawyer, Robert Goldman, to sue Amina and Barratte at the time of Ott’s birth, in 1974. But twelve years later, I, as a freshly minted lawyer married to Katerine’s only son, Bo—who was a rightful heir to the Schrieberg fortune—convinced her to reconsider.

I argued that the Rabuns not only had stolen Katerine and her brothers’ inheritance—which perhaps could be overlooked, because Amina had saved them from certain death—but also had stolen the inheritance of their children and grandchildren. Justice could not so easily overlook this wrong. These future generations were entitled to a share of the estate created by their ancestors—just as future generations of Rabuns were entitled to a share of the estate created by their ancestors.

I also pointed out to Katerine that we would not be harming Amina financially by seeking to recover the value of these assets. Amina was wealthy in her own right as an heiress to the Rabun fortune and as a successful newspaper publisher. Reparations for the Schrieberg assets would have little, if any, effect upon her lifestyle, which had been lavish in comparison with the way Katerine had been forced to live without a similar inheritance. And I assured her repeatedly that we would be suing Amina and Barratte Rabun in name only. It was Otto Rabun, Amina’s uncle, who as a member of the Nazi SS had taken the Schrieberg’s assets. We would carefully draft our complaint to identify him as the wrongdoer, not his niece or daughter. After further prodding and encouragement by Bo—to whom the prospect of receiving a sizable inheritance had increasing appeal—Katerine finally relented.

Bill Gwynne and I promptly initiated the lawsuit, naming both Amina and Barratte as defendants. Bill was a master, and I watched in awe, helping him behind the scenes. From a torrent of Hague Convention subpoenas, we obtained from German archives and private files copies of contracts signed by Amina’s father for the construction of the crematoria at Auschwitz and Majdanek. Equally damning, we obtained a copy of a patent issued in 1941 to Amina’s father for an improved crematorium design, first installed at Auschwitz, that utilized better airflow management, ash-removal conveyors, and new refractory materials to elevate temperatures and increase capacity. In the accompanying technical drawings, Amina recognized the shape of the brick sandbox built by her father for her and Helmut. This vulgar resemblance, and the photographs of thousands of cadavers in the camps, haunted Amina’s dreams the rest of her life.

Although these documents bore no direct legal relevance to our claim for recoupment of the value of the Schriebergs’ theaters and home, they made sensational copy for the press, immediately turning the case in our favor. We had carefully focused our allegations upon Otto Rabun as promised, but Amina and Barratte Rabun, as the living children of Nazis, became the target of public derision and outrage. Soon the publisher of the award-winning
Cheektowaga Register
was being tried in the media as a war criminal—and Jewish groups were calling for a boycott of her bloodstained newspaper and the bloodstained books of Bette Press.

Katerine was horrified, and furious with Bill and me for allowing this to happen. But there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, and Bill was unapologetic. Things happen in the heat of battle, he explained, and there is sometimes collateral damage. Amina and Barratte could have at any time spared themselves public embarrassment by simply doing the right thing and offering to settle the case years ago when Mr. Goldman wrote his letter inviting a negotiated resolution. We had done everything we could to avoid embarrassing them.

The public attacks generated by the lawsuit stung Amina and Barratte deeply, but they also had the effect of drawing the cousins together after years of separation. The two women had been through far worse together during the war, and in facing this new common threat they found again the mutual love and trust for each other that had sustained them during those terrible days, weeks, and months after Kamenz. Plus, now there was Barratte’s twelve-year-old son, Ott, to consider. Amina’s refusal to bear children meant that he was the only hope for a future generation of Rabuns. As a sign of reconciliation, Barratte asked Amina to be Ott’s godmother. She joyfully accepted, becoming Ott’s Nonna Amina.

With the survival of the family at stake, the cousins held each other close and faced the storm. In interviews and editorials, they explained how Amina had saved the Schriebergs at great personal risk; how the purchase of the theaters had been for fair value at the time, giving the Schriebergs the money they desperately needed to survive; and how just a few hundred yards from where the Schriebergs lived under her protection, the Soviets raped Amina, Barratte, and Bette and murdered their family. But coming from the mouths of the accused, these stories did little to change public opinion. Amina and Barratte Rabun were tried and convicted not for wrongfully withholding the Schriebergs’ money, about which no one in the public seemed concerned, but, symbolically, for perpetrating the Holocaust itself.

The final devastating blow to Amina and Barratte Rabun, however, did not come directly from the lawsuit filed by Bill Gwynne and me. It came instead from Amina’s once loyal secretary, Alice Guiniere. Seeing her demanding employer now as a monster who needed to be stopped, Alice recounted to the local U.S. attorney a mysterious visit to her employer’s office one day by a Mr. Gerry Hanson. Alice also produced the discarded U.S. passport bearing Mr. Hanson’s daughter’s new identity with the incorrect birth date, and galley proofs of four passports bearing his, his wife’s, and his other children’s new identities, collected from a waste bin in the print shop of Bette Press. She explained that she had retained these documents because something didn’t seem right at the time.

An investigation was quickly launched and a grand jury handed down indictments. Standing before a press conference, the U.S. attorney revealed Gerry Hanson’s true identity as Gerhard Haber, an accused war criminal and international fugitive, and announced that Amina Rabun and Albrecht Bosch were being charged with obstruction of justice, harboring fugitives, and forging official documents, for which they each could be sentenced to thirty years imprisonment.

With all energies turned to the criminal defense, Amina’s lawyer telephoned Bill Gwynne with an offer to settle the civil litigation. In light of everything that had befallen Amina, and everything that had happened in Kamenz, Katerine Schrieberg-Wolfson instructed us to accept the offer immediately and end the litigation—for forty percent of our original demand.

In Amina’s final editorial as publisher of
The
Cheektowaga Register
—a position from which she resigned on the day she was arrested—Amina pointed out that for assisting the Schriebergs in Germany in much the same manner that she had assisted the Habers in the United States, she could have been shot. “No good deed ever goes unpunished,” the editorial concluded, “but whether a deed is good or bad appears to turn not on the nature or quality of the deed itself but rather the amount of hatred that exists for those who are its intended beneficiary.”

—

THE ROLE OF
Amina Rabun as godmother had suited Ott well. She became the fairy godmother who could afford Ott the luxury to be who he wanted to be—and to love him without condition and guide him gently along the path of his dreams.

Nonna Amina encouraged Ott but never insisted. When he showed no interest in playing baseball, football, or hockey (a heresy in a city just one bridge-length from the Canadian border), she did not pressure or prod. When Ott showed an aptitude for music, Nonna Amina purchased for him a piano and retained the services of a private instructor. When he showed a fascination with birds, she erected for him a small aviary behind the garage of her house. Although he was a bit old for it, she read to him nightly, in German and English, and took him to museums, aquariums, amusement parks, and movies. She also brought him to her office at the newspaper on Saturday mornings, as her own father had done in Dresden. There, her friend Albrecht Bosch—who had moved out of the mansion after taking a new male lover—showed Ott how to print books and cards, and how being “different” need not necessarily mean being lonely and unhappy.