A year later, Anna, queen of his soul, was lying in the ghetto with pneumonia, weakened by her second pregnancy, by the cold, by too little food. She and the fetus died. And still Kobinski put the shawl over his head and said kaddish, pouring his mourning out to God and feeling that God shared his bottomless sorrow.
Even in Auschwitz he didn’t lose his faith that God knew what He was doing, even there.
There are things.
Who can measure a man’s love for his son? Who can define that tenderest moment of the human soul, when it looks on promising youth, youth of one’s own face and frame, still dewy with its newness on the earth? Who can fathom the protectiveness a child engenders?
The Christians have this myth: For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten son.
Did God love the world? My Lord wasn’t so sure, but at least the Christians had the analogy right, the turnkey idea of it—giving up one’s son. There couldn’t be a greater sacrifice. And he had been tortured, too, this Jesus, and God had sat through it all, barring maybe a little vitriolic thunder and lightning. Yes, the Christians had tapped into something there. What could be more difficult? And there was God, big enough to allow it to happen, just to show how much He loved the world.
Yosef Kobinski wasn’t that big.
When had Wallick gotten the idea? My Lord had asked himself that a thousand times. What had he done, what had been the fatal sin in his demeanor, that had provoked such a plan? Should he have lain down on his belly earlier? Should he have whimpered and groveled and begged like the others? Would that have kept Isaac alive? Yes. Maybe.
So then you had to ask: how much of his refusal to submit to the horrors of Auschwitz had been true religious faith… and how much arrogant pride, a mystic’s show-offmanship? These were the sins Kobinski’s soul carried, and they were only the start.
Yosef Kobinski had gone on detail one day, marching out of camp with other inmates to unload building materials off a train, heavy boards, rough in the freezing rain. Still, it was light duty compared to what he was usually sentenced to: cleaning latrines. He even said a prayer of gratitude for the reprieve, didn’t wonder at it at all—not until that evening when he returned to the barrack to learn that Wallick had taken his son.
That had gotten to him, pierced him through. He’d been shaken, disturbed, unable to pray, unable to write. He wanted to go find the boy, needed it like he needed air, but it was futile. The officers’ quarters were in a different part of the camp; he couldn’t get close.
The next morning during roll call, Isaac was nowhere to be seen. Afterward, Kobinski dared approach Wallick. What have you done with my son?
Wallick studied his face, slyly pleased, reading the measure of the fear there. I’m taking good care of him, he said, very good care.
That next night Kobinski was sick from worry, feeling, finally, what it meant to be powerless, when Wallick sent for him, brought him into his own little house, sat him in a corner. Made Kobinski watch while he raped his son.
“You raped my son,” My Lord whispered to the mass on the table.
The mouth worked, but nothing came out. Years ago, Wallick had accepted that he was in Hell. It fit that older, Germanic mythos, or perhaps the Bavarian Catholic one. When they’d arrived Kobinski had the advantage of foreknowledge; he’d landed on his feet. Wallick had been merely hysterical. So when Kobinski figured out enough of the language to proclaim himself divine, he’d proclaimed Wallick a demon at the same time. Wallick had not even understood what was happening; much less could he defend himself. He believed that he had died that night in the woods and had accepted that he was in the afterlife, being punished, that Kobinski was his tormentor. He used to plead to God for mercy, but he seemed to have given up hope of that.
There are things.
“Except… it doesn’t even approach the truth to say ‘you raped my son.’ Does it?”
Wallick’s chin tiled down a little. It probably wasn’t a nod, but it could be taken as such and My Lord did. Even without Wallick’s voice, My Lord knew his lines. They’d had this dialogue many times before, in better days.
“A crime is not a single act. It is a series of indignations to living souls. And you can’t see the crime, you can’t possibly punish it, unless you comprehend each wound at its birth.”
I did not… I was only acting… They told us…
“Be quiet now,” My Lord said softly, “and feel it: There I was, a man, a father, sitting in a chair. You remember the chair? It was heavy, carved mahogany, an old dining room chair with an upholstered seat. And that first night you made me sit there and you tied my wrists to the arms—the chair had curved arms, remember? And my ankles were tied to the legs. The chair itself you had fastened to the floor earlier with nails.
“It goes hard for you that you nailed down the chair, Wallick. It shows that you understood far more than you admit. You understood that a father would thrash, that he would propel his own body into the path of whatever it was that threatened his son, that no coercion could keep him from doing so. And that first time you tied me I knew then that it would be bad, and I wanted to know what you were doing and where was Isaac. Do you remember what you told me?”
Wallick blinked. His eyes did not look at all well. The left was swollen and red, nearly shut. Curious. One of the advantages of torture on Fiori was the relative lack of microbes. Even they did not flourish here. Be that as it may, there was something in that eye. The other was not swollen, but it ran constantly with mucusy tears.
“You told me that if I didn’t cooperate, you’d kill my son. And at that time I didn’t know there could be worse things.”
Wallick began to gasp, choking. There was some fuss while the attendants were called in. My Lord waited patiently. He did not lose his place in the narrative. As soon as they were alone again, he picked up the hideous thread.
“And then, when I was tied down, you brought him out. That first night, Wallick, how clever you were! That first night, he was still an innocent, still my Isaac. Why, I could see that you’d even been kind, given him food. He was wary, but he had a look on his serious little face, as if to reassure me that things were all right. He was still trying to be strong; can you imagine it? Still trying to be strong for me.”
My Lord sighed. People thought it was easy to sin; that was a myth. Handalman, what did he know about sin? It was the hardest thing My Lord had ever done to sit here and go through it, relive it over and over. How blessed it would be to forget! To lay it aside! But if he allowed himself respite, Wallick would also have respite, and that could never be.
“You didn’t gag me—another thing against you. You would like me to believe that you were some dumb ruffian, a brute, cruel only by instinct, not by deliberation. But you were cleverer than that. Not gagging me: I have thought it over many times. In the first place, no one would think it so very odd to hear screams coming from your house. True, there was a danger that I might shout something embarrassing, might name the act you were committing, but you knew I wouldn’t, didn’t you? You knew. Because whatever came out of my mouth for your Nazi neighbors to hear, Isaac, my son, would also hear!”
Another sigh. These memories, suckled like demonic children, clawed at his throat and chest. The saner parts of him begged him to put them away. No. It took great will to sin greatly.
“At first I did speak, that first night. When you grasped his two wrists in your left hand and forced him over the table…”
My Lord described the events of that night with the polish of long practice. This was the way it was when you accused: you had to spell it out. The crime had to be brought into the light, in all its sickening detail, because criminals lived in the dark, believing no one could see. Shame came with the light. But even he was only half listening. His eyes lingered down Wallick’s left arm where the flesh had been drawn away in strips. His fingertips were raw and nailless. It made My Lord sick and yet also satisfied, especially when he saw again those muscled white arms stretching Isaac’s thin, frail ones up and over the table.