But Catholics as part of the Judaic conspiracy? Helmut said it. He took it as a matter of course. I couldn’t make head or tail of it — then. Imagine hearing that from a young SS cadet, with his German eagle and death’s-head on his cap and lightning bolts on his shoulder patch. Of course, in his own mad way he was right, but not quite in the way he meant.
I am ashamed to say that I did not question him or argue with him, at the time not having much more use for Catholics than he did. I thought of them as a lot of things but never as part of the “Judaic conspiracy.” In defense I can only say that the expression would also have amazed both New Orleans Jews and Holy Name parishioners.
My father and I went on to Bayreuth. I remember hearing Tristan and Isolde with him. He had graduated from Puccini to Wagner. His eyes were closed during the entire second act. I confess I felt contempt for him and admiration for Helmut.
Do you know that I don’t think he ever noticed the Nazis or Hitler or the SA or the SS that entire summer — any more than he noticed Huey Long when we got home?
I decided not to stay in Germany, after all. I came home and went to Tulane, tuition-free because of my father’s academic connection.
15. DURING THIS STRANGE, rambling account, I noticed with surprise that the old priest’s voice grew stronger. Toward the end he pushed himself up to a sitting position and began gesturing vigorously — for example, holding out both hands, palms up, to show how Helmut had presented him with a bayonet inscribed with Blut und Ehre.
Now he is struggling to get up.
“Why don’t you just stay here, Father,” I suggest. “You need a good night’s sleep.”
“I’m fine! I’m fine!”
“But you suffered some sort of attack and I’m not sure what—”
“Oh, I’ve had those before. It’s an allergic reaction.”
“Allergic reaction? Maybe, but it may be something more serious.” Like temporal-lobe epilepsy. Hence the vivid recall of smell, place, memory of Germany in the 1930s.
But he insists on getting up, back to his post, as he puts it, as firewatcher. I help him onto the stool, on condition that he come in for a CORTscan and an ECG. He agrees.
I am anxious to leave. I am worried about Claude Bon.
“One question, Tom.”
“Yes?”
“What do you think?”
“Of what? The Nazis?”
“No. Your colleagues. The Louisiana Weimar psychiatrists,” he says ironically.
“I don’t understand.”
“Never mind,” he says quietly. “What do you think of my experience in Germany?”
There is nothing to do but answer truthfully, without saying that I was more interested in his story as a symptom of a possible brain disorder than in the actual events which he related.
“Well, I see your German experience as a very vivid recollection of a youthful experience, not an uncommon phenomenon actually. It has happened to me.”
“Is that all you see?”
“Very well. So you were attracted by Helmut and the esprit of the SS. You were very young. Many people were attracted, even Churchill, as you mentioned. I don’t doubt you. As a matter of fact, I am familiar with some of the German doctors and eugenicists you mentioned. Very interesting, but—”
I must have shrugged. He shakes his head, makes a face, rounding his eyes in his earlier rueful-risible expression. He is fiddling with the azimuth.
“Okay,” he says suddenly. “Except for—”
“Then I’ll be going along.”
“—one thing. A footnote.”
I sigh but don’t sit opposite him this time. I snap Lucy’s bag shut.
FATHER SMITH’S FOOTNOTE
I’ll make it short and sweet. You should pick up Claude as soon as possible. Believe me.
I did not stay in Germany. I came back to New Orleans with my father.
I went to Tulane for four years. I played some football.
The war came. I took OCS in Jackson, became a ninety-day wonder.
I ended up as an infantry lieutenant in the Seventh Army, General Patch commanding. Nothing very dashing about us, nothing like Patton’s Third Army. I wasn’t exactly a dashing lieutenant either, though I liked the army well enough. To tell you the truth, I was scared all the time. Scared of what? Of getting killed. To tell the truth, I never got shot at.
We were in the XV Corps that crossed the Rhine on the Mannheim bridge and took part in the final thrust in April of ’45, down the Danube first, then struck south to Munich, which we captured on the thirtieth of April. Not much resistance. A single SS division tried to block our advance without success, but we lost a few. Our captain — we were in the 3d Division — got himself killed, and I was acting captain for a few weeks, my highest rank in the military.
No, we didn’t see Tübingen, but we liberated Eglfing-Haar, the famous hospital outside Munich. No, we didn’t liberate Dachau, but I saw it later. There was no opposition at Eglfing-Haar, nobody in fact but the nurses and patients. Most of the doctors were gone. I asked about Dr. Jäger. The nurses knew him but said he had been “transferred” a few days before. But one nurse showed me where he worked. It was the Kinderhaw, the children’s division, a rather cheerful place which had a hundred and fifty beds for child psychiatric cases. There were only twenty children there, most in bad shape, though nothing like what I saw at Dachau. I asked the nurse what had happened to the others. She didn’t say anything, but she took me to a small room off the main ward. She said it was a “special department.” It was a very pleasant sunny room with a large window, but completely bare except for a small white-tiled table only long enough to accommodate a child. What was notable about the room was a large geranium plant in a pot on the windowsill to catch the sunlight. It was a beautiful plant, luxuriant, full of bloom, obviously very carefully tended. The nurse said it was watered every day.
She was very very nervous, obviously anxious to tell me something, but either she was afraid to or didn’t know how.
I asked her what the room was used for. She said that five or six times a month a doctor and a nurse would take a child into the room. After a while the doctor and nurse would come out alone. The “special department” room had an outside door.
It took me a little while to understand what she was saying. Then, as if I had understood all along, I asked her casually what they used. She said many drugs, Luminal, morphine, scopolamine, Zyklon B through a face mask. It was then a new gas manufactured by I. G. Farben which upon exposure to air turned to cyanide.
I asked her if she had ever gone in the room with the children.
“Oh no,” she said. She would only see the doctor and nurse go in with the children and come out alone. She did not seem horrified, but only anxious that I get it straight. I couldn’t be sure she was telling the truth, but she probably was, because she didn’t have to tell me about the “special department.”