Masquerade

3

He heard their voices. Although he had met her only once, he recognized one of them as belonging to Sister Janet Schultes.

He was good at that. At one time in his history, Rabbi Irving Winer had sustained the thin strand of his life by honing his every resource and faculty, not the least of these his five senses.

He had tabbed them the instant they exited the elevator. Clearly, they were making no effort to keep their voices down. But he had made every effort to be silent, hoping they would not accost him.

He assumed, correctly, that the other female voice belonged to the nun-author, Sister Marie Monahan. Janet was serving as, for want of a better title, hostess of this workshop. Earlier this afternoon, she had welcomed him, shown him to his room, given him a map of the campus and a schedule for the workshop, and answered the few questions he’d had. She’d suggested he might be tired and want to rest. Eagerly, he’d assented as a way of assuring seclusion.

He had no idea that Janet and Marie were long-lost friends, wanted to be together, and had no intention of invading his privacy. So he made no sound.

In time they left, again taking the elevator. Once more a gladly received silence pervaded the third floor’s private residence wing.

Rabbi Winer gazed out the window. The immediate scene seemed downright bucolic. There were about as many trees as God allowed to grow in one place. Beyond the woods, he could make out the city in brick and neon, and pedestrians and homeowners and muggers and apartment dwellers and hope and despair. If he consciously tried, he could hear the city’s sounds. But he preferred not to hear. It was easy to block out the far-off noises.

Although the room’s temperature was pleasant, even a bit on the coolish side, the rabbi was perspiring. The window revealed his present reality. But his mind, his memory, continued to invade the present with the past. Even as he tried to suppress the ancient images, he knew from experience he would not succeed. Little by little, the unwanted but vivid whispers from the past grew until they blotted out the present.

It was November 9, 1938, not September 3, 1989. And it was Munich, not Detroit. God! Dear God! He did not want to live it again, but a perverse power decreed that he must.

Earlier in November, Ernst von Rath, the German Embassy attache in Paris, had been assassinated by a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan.

Although at the time Irving was only twelve, he knew things were changing radically and rapidly. More and more Germans were wearing the Nazi uniform. His parents and older sister grew more secretive, as if trying to shield him from what he sensed was happening. It seemed the Nazis were eager for an event they could designate as the “final straw” calling for what would eventually be termed the “final solution.” As it happened, the von Rath incident was it. And November 9, 1938, would forevermore be known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Crystal, or the Night of Shattered Glass.

And that was precisely how young Irving Winer was introduced to Kristallnacht. Heavy-booted feet tramped up the stairs, followed by pounding on the door, followed by orders shouted in imperious German. Then the sound of glass shattering, furniture splintering, voices pleading, voices commanding.

In bed, covers pulled over his head, young Irving never saw the Nazis who destroyed his home, the precious musical instruments, the heirlooms, the works of art. He never saw the Nazis who seized and dragged his father from their house that night. But he knew; somehow he sensed, as he cowered beneath the covers, that his boyhood, his youth, was ending prematurely that night.

In the days and weeks that followed, his mother determined to stay in Munich and await her husband’s return. She was equally determined to get her children out of, and as far away from, Germany as possible. In both resolves she failed. Never again would they see her husband, their father. He was among the earliest to be cut down in the brutal resolution of Hitler’s “problem.”

In his first twelve years, as a member of a traditional, loving Orthodox family, Irving Winer could never have guessed or imagined the depth of cruelty to which humans could descend. This brutal phase of his education began immediately after Kristallnacht.

The synagogues were burned, repeatedly if necessary, to destroy them utterly. Jewish-owned stores and businesses were vandalized. Jewish people-men, women, and children-were insulted, publicly humiliated, and abused. They were forced to wear the Star of David as a mark of degradation.

Finally, in a seemingly random choice, Jews were rounded up like animals and taken away to a secret fate.

By the time the three remaining Winers were packed into a cattle car and started on their train trip to Dachau, Irving had already learned what it was to be treated as subhuman refuse. He was about to learn that there was nothing he would not do, no service he would not perform just to stay barely alive. Dachau taught him that.

On their arrival at the concentration camp, decisions were made. Olga Winer was transported to Hartheim, where the ovens worked overtime. Her ashes were indistinguishable from thousands of others. Olga’s daughter, Helen, became a subject for experimentation before following her mother.

Irving’s young, strong body was judged useful for the moment.

He slept whenever they let him. He ate whatever they gave him. The rest of the time, he labored. He did whatever he was told to do. And, unlike almost every other inmate of the camp, he survived.

When, toward war’s end, the beasts who ruled him told him they needed him to betray his fellow prisoners-God help him! God forgive him! — he did so.

He survived.

After the Allies liberated his camp and he began slowly, tentatively, to become accustomed to a far more human existence, the enormity of his experience began to trouble, then torture him. Chronologically, he was nineteen. In every other way, he was older-much, much older.

As soon as he could, he emigrated to the United States.

He tried to lose his very identity in a series of enterprises. Religion came closest to giving him a certain small measure of absolution. And so he became rabbi of a Reform congregation, two steps removed from his strict Orthodox upbringing.

His motives for embracing the Reform branch of Judaism were unclear even to him. But it was conceivable they had something to do with his experience with the strictness of Nazi discipline that had controlled so much of his life.

He married. They had no children. Tests indicated he was sterile, made so by illnesses he had contracted at Dachau. His wife was understanding and supportive.

She was patient, as well, with the dark moods that engulfed him with some regularity. His problems stayed hidden within the privacy of their home. His congregation knew him only as one who had survived the Holocaust and was a wise and good rabbi.

And now, in addition, the congregation gloried in Rabbi Winer’s literary accomplishments. They boasted of their rabbi, the author. “Yes, that’s right; our rabbi is the one who writes the books. Yes, he’s just a regular guy. His door is always open to us. We wouldn’t trade him for anyone.”

Although it was generally known that he had been subjected to the horrors of Dachau, that fact alone was all anyone knew of his past. He made it clear to everyone that the subject of Dachau was, as they would say in the land of his birth, verboten. With his wife alone did he share- and that with much reluctance-the details of his captivity. Even then he could not bring himself to tell her how, near the end of his time in the camp, he had become a traitor. It was his ultimate secret.

No matter how he tried, he could not forgive himself for betraying his fellow prisoners. If his sin were ever to be revealed, it would, he felt, mean the end of everything. The end of his rabbinate; the end of his marriage; the end of his last shred of self-respect; the end, of course, of his writing career; the end of his life.

But one person knew. Irving Winer had no clue as to how this person had discovered the secret. Those limited few in the camp who had known, only two of the guards and one prisoner, were long dead. Yet, still, one person knew.

Klaus Krieg knew. And he had hinted that the secret might not be safe. In the oblique warning that was issued, it was evident that Krieg knew he was toying with dynamite and that the thread alone was enough to turn Winer toward desperate means.

The implied and manifest threats on either side had produced a tenuous Mexican standoff. But it was, at best, a delicate balance.

And now, this very evening, Winer was about to meet his enemy face to face. He was unsure how to handle this meeting. It was for this reason that he had argued with his wife and finally convinced her not to accompany him. Somehow, Rabbi Winer would have to resolve this matter alone. One on one.

The prospect put him on edge. Too much so, it seemed. He was aware that his pulse rate had quickened and that, even though this was a cool evening, he was now perspiring freely. As he had on similar occasions, he turned to prayer.

He removed from his suitcase his siddur, the Jewish prayerbook. The rabbi prayed that God would have a special word for him. One that would show him the proper course of action.

After a brief prayer for guidance from the daily liturgy, Winer opened the prayerbook at random. His hope was that God would direct his hands to find the special message.

It gave him added consolation to read in the book’s original Hebrew. This was Tehillim, the Book of Psalms. A good omen. The powerful prayer of Psalms was Winer’s favorite in the Bible. The index finger of his right hand was touching the numerical identification of Psalm 109, one of the “cursing Psalms.” Just what the doctor ordered. His attention wandered up and down and through the Psalms, snatching at phrases that seemed particularly appropriate.

They have opened wicked and treacherous mouths against me. They have spoken to me. . with words of hatred. . and attacked me without cause.

When [my accuser] is judged, let him go forth condemned, and may his plea be in vain. May his days be few. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children be roaming vagrants and beggars; may they be cast out of the ruins of their homes. May the usurer ensnare all his belongings and strangers plunder the fruit of his labors. May there be no one to do him a kindness, nor anyone to pity his orphans. May his posterity meet with destruction. Because he remembered not to show kindness, but persecuted the wretched and poor and the brokenhearted to do them to death. He loved cursing; may it come upon him; he took no delight in blessing; may it be far from him. And may he be clothed with cursing as with a robe; may it penetrate into his entrails like water and like oil into his bones; may it be for him like a garment which covers him like a girdle which is always about him.

But do you, O God, my Lord, deal kindly with me for Your names sake; in your generous kindness rescue me; For I am wretched and poor, and my heart is pierced within me. Help me, O Lord, my God; Save me, in Your kindness.

Winer sat back. He closed his eyes. In the silence that engulfed him he contemplated the words he’d just read. The words of the Psalm seemed to describe his “enemy” quite well. Klaus Krieg, completely devoid of pity or kindness. On the contrary, quite capable of cursing, indeed, causing the destruction of, the defenseless.

Of course, in this day and age, one does not expect God personally to right the wrongs of this evil person. The time has passed when a recalcitrant Pharaoh is sent reeling by ten plagues imposed directly by God. In those days, Moses could threaten the Egyptians confident that the Ribono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe, would act in miraculous and destructive punishments.

God was not going to do Winer’s work for him. That was not the message of the Psalm to which God had led the rabbi. The message, clearly, was that Krieg must be stopped, must be punished. “May his days be few.” Capital punishment. What on earth could be a more appropriate sentence?

As Winer continued to muse over the Psalm, he grew more calm, more self-assured. He was aware that his pulse rate had slowed and regulated. Far from continuing to perspire, he now felt cool. As usual, he had found his strength in prayer.

He continued to pray. He continued to think.

“May his days be few.”

On the other hand, maybe there was, indeed a fate worse than death. What was it? In Shakespeare? “The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”

Wasn’t that the thrust of the Psalm? To reward evil with evil?

Then, let it be done.