One of the Jews looked straight at the window. Heinrich could not tell if she saw him. There was nothing in her eyes. A spot of dazzling red appeared on her lip where she had bitten herself during her final moments.
He observed the attitudes of the SS men through every step of this process. He still said nothing, but he was very concerned about their emotional well-being having to perform such a necessary but onerous task.
Finally he watched the labor crews take away the bodies for burial. He spoke up then because he had a suggestion. “You should burn the bodies instead,” he told Hoess.
Daniel forced himself into a very tiny place inside Himmler’s mind. Then he tried to make himself go to sleep.
“We have taken from them what wealth they had. I have issued a strict order, which SS-Obergruppenführer Pohl has carried out, that this wealth should, as a matter of course, be handed over to the Reich without reserve.”
Some in his SS would let their personal greed make a travesty of his own code of ethics. The anger built in Heinrich until the internal volume of his moral outrage shook Daniel from his little hiding place.
Heinrich began to explain the punishment that would be delivered, and by the end of that explanation he was growling. “He who takes even one Reich Mark of it, that’s his death! A number of SS Men—not very many—have violated that order, and that will be their death, without mercy. We had the moral right, we had the duty to our own Folk, to kill this Folk which wanted to kill us. But we don’t have the right to enrich ourselves even with one fur, one watch, one mark, one cigarette, or anything else!”
Himmler seemed to blink more than the average person, or perhaps Daniel was simply intensely aware of it. Between the blinks Daniel saw the Jews in the audience moving again, but whether to get closer to Himmler and the podium or to make their own escape he could not tell.
“Again and again we have sifted out and cast aside what was worthless, what did not suit us. Just as long as we have strength to do this will this organization remain healthy. The moment we forget the law which is the foundation of our race, and the law of selection and austerity towards ourselves, we shall have the germ of death in us, and will perish…”
Heinrich could feel them slipping away. What would become of him if he lost his command?
“We shall colonize. We shall indoctrinate our boys with the laws of the SS-organization. I consider it to be absolutely necessary to the life of our peoples, that we should not only impart the meaning of ancestry, grandchildren and future, but feel these to be a part of our being. Without there being any talk about it, without our needing to make use of rewards and similar material things, it must be a matter of course that we have children. It must be a matter of course that the most copious breeding should be from this racial super-stratum of the Germanic people.”
Heinrich had spent his childhood staring up at the stone castle at Burg Trusnitiz on the high hill. He’d fantasized about a brotherhood of Teutonic knights who gave their blood defending the sacred soil of their homeland from invaders who had no notion of the necessity for honor, duty, and purity. Now he had his own brotherhood of dark knights who he hoped might one day thrill the world with their power. Without his SS he would be less than nothing.
“We want to be worthy of being permitted to be the first SS-men of the Führer, Adolf Hitler, in the long history of the Germanic people, which stretches before us. Now let us remember the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, who will create the Germanic Reich and will lead us into the Germanic future.
“Our Führer Adolf Hitler.
“Sieg Heil!
“Sieg Heil!
“Sieg Heil!”
They all stood, saluting. Heinrich could see how the ragged child who had first intruded upon his speech now lay beneath their polished boots, falling into bits too fine, he hoped, for history to hold them.
It was the curse of the great to have to walk over corpses.
And deep inside, Daniel prayed let me out let me out let me out.
12
STRIPED PAJAMAS. GORDON had had a couple of pairs. His favorites, with the red stripes. Not like the blue stripes on the uniforms the Jews wore. His stripes had been narrower. And of course they hadn’t had the two superimposed yellow triangles making the Star of David. Still, Daniel wished now he hadn’t bought them for his son. Now he couldn’t think of them as anything but uniforms for the sleep walkers, for the walking dreamers, the soon-to-be-dead.
Daniel and Elena had recognized that something was wrong, although they rarely put that worry into words. Gordon was less active than his classmates, more reticent to enter into the almost mindless, almost violent play of other boys his age. Although he clearly wanted to—Daniel could see it in his dark eyes, the vague shininess they took on when he saw the other boys playing. Daniel recognized the desire to be a “real” boy, all boy, the kind of boy everybody loved.
Before the diagnosis Daniel had taken Gordon’s reticence for shyness. He saw it as his job to draw his son out of his shell. For about six months when Gordon had been six or seven, the normally affectionate boy had become squirmy, stubborn, and reluctant to be held.
“It’s natural,” Elena had said. “My sister’s kids went through the exact same thing.”
“Maybe. I’m not so sure.” Daniel’s strategy had been to rough-house with his son, wrestling, grabbing, pretending to be a cowboy astride his horse. Daniel as the bull had been an angry force of nature.
Gordon waved the giant beach towel in Daniel’s face. Elena had sewn a picture of an enormous frog on it. Daniel aimed his head with its imaginary horns at the frog’s round belly.
“Here, Daddy‑bull! Come get me!”
Daniel crawled on all fours as fast as he could beneath the towel, shoulders and butt thrashing. “Snort! Snort!”
“Daddy‑bull’s got a cold!” Gordon leaped onto Daniel’s back, clutching his T-shirt at the shoulders, digging his small hands into Daniel’s sides, giggling. “I’m beatin up Daddy! Hey, I’m beatin him up!” Gordon liked the game more and more as he grew older, playing his part even more aggressively.
And Daniel encouraged it. He was even rougher in his play, as if to demonstrate to his small son how much the boy could actually handle, that there was no reason to be afraid.
“Wrestle, Daddy! Wrestle!” Daniel pulled Gordon off his back, laughing, put him on the floor beneath him, straddled him and began tickling. Gordon squirmed with uncontrollable laughter.
“That’s probably enough, Dan,” Elena said from the kitchen. “You’re getting him all worked up.”
It was a guy thing, he supposed. Not that girls couldn’t play as aggressively as boys, but it seemed that more frequently they knew when to stop. A father and his son, that was just two boys playing together, not knowing when to stop. And sometimes the games lasted a lifetime.
Daniel tickled more insistently, then bent over, wrapping his arms around Gordon, trying to hold him more tightly, kissing him on the cheek, clutching him with a strange sort of desperation, kissing the boy’s small hands, and before he knew it he had taken his son’s upper arm into his mouth, as he had at other times—playing “lion” or “monster,” and Gordon was giggling so, and Daniel thought about biting him, thinking how adults were always telling kids “I could just eat you,” and he tasted the salt, and stopped.
Gordon’s giggles faded, and he stared at Daniel with those shiny black eyes as if waiting to see what Daniel was going to do next. Daniel didn’t know himself. He loved this little boy so much he just had to step away before he ate him all up.