Corridor of Darkness Read online

  They sat away from other guests on the open terrace of Büchings-Garten, a popular restaurant on the castle ramparts where the panoramic view was the prime attraction. Below them rose the off-kilter spire of the Lutheran church. Student legend had it that a virgin graduating from the university would automatically right the ancient tower to perpendicular. Far off to the left, the gothic spires of the Elisabethkirche shone in the late afternoon light. The view extended to forested hills across the valley and neatly-groomed fields in the distance, and the main rail line beyond the river resembled a toy train set.

  Between them on the table sat two glasses of Philippus-Bräu, barely touched. A middle-aged waitress stood near the terrace entrance, absent-mindedly smoothing her apron as she awaited the next order. Dappled sunlight danced on the white tablecloth, and an occasional leaf skittered across the graveled terrace in the light breeze. Erika sat back and crossed her legs, revealing a bit more thigh. Occasionally she reached over to touch his arm while making a point.

  “Want a sample of the fun we med students deal with?” Her smile suggested a secret confidence. “Just imagine, some of our peasant women still stitch themselves into their undergarments the moment the weather turns cold. In the winter they come to the clinic and we must cut everything away for the doctor’s examination. The stench can be just dreadful. In some ways, Germany still lives in the Middle Ages.”

  “And this draws you to medicine?”

  Erika laughed. “I suppose it’s in my blood. It’s hard to put into words. Both my parents love it so, and the work in the women’s clinic is fulfilling.”

  “But?”

  “But I’d really rather travel, see more of the world, experience society, the big cities.” She was silent for a moment. “That does sound quite shallow of me, doesn’t it? But I do feel limited here, where everyone knows your every move. It’s certainly not the exciting world you describe with all your international adventures.”

  “If it isn't what you truly want, look at alternatives. After all, I’ve already left finance for academia.”

  “That’s not the German way, you know. More German rigidity, I suppose. Once we choose a career, it stays chosen.” She hesitated. “And when I do finally marry, I’ll devote myself to my husband and children, of course.”

  Ryan heard the echo of the National Socialist propaganda on the role of women. “So that’s what you really want?”

  “I do love children. And my parents are proof that family—after the State, of course—takes priority. They gave up everything—friends, family, university positions—all to get away from the Bolsheviks, all for my sake.”

  “Well, the German Reds certainly aren’t much of a threat anymore.” Hitler had eliminated open political opposition after only a year in charge, and his purge of the SA a month before had put full control firmly in Nazi hands.

  She regarded him intently. Do we really have to talk politics? Living with the propaganda on a daily basis was bad enough. One had to be wary, even with friends and family. Denunciations were commonplace, usually anonymous, and people had been hauled away for being too open with their views. She knew what needed to be said.

  “The Führer’s already done so much to improve things, don’t you think? Unemployment’s down, people are no longer starving, everyone’s more confident, even optimistic. We're finally sharing a sense of unity, of self-worth.”

  Ryan lowered his voice and scanned the other guests on the terrace, aware of his sensitive ground. “Don’t the newest laws concern you, the severe restrictions on the Jews, the nighttime arrests?”

  Could this American with his perfect German be something more than chance-met?

  “Listen, Ryan, hard times demand strong measures.” Erika put confidence in her voice. “All the bickering among the parties and politicians had to stop. And now they’ve finally gotten rid of those SA bullies who were such leeches. The Führer’s a good man with a good heart; he’s just had some bad people advising him. I’m sure it’ll get easier for everyone from now on.”

  Ryan thought of girls who professed loving Hitler more than their own fathers, of the uniformed seven-year-olds on parade, marching and saluting with military precision. He let the subject drop.

  From the castle they wandered down through the narrow streets and entered the Elisabethkirche, taking time to admire the worn tombstone figures of medieval knights and ladies before finally agreeing that dinner was in order. Ryan suggested a family-run restaurant in the nearby Rittergasse where they could avoid sharing a table with strangers. Instead they shared sauerbraten and fried potatoes. The wine was ordinary, but neither seemed to mind.

  On the walk back up toward the market square Erika remarked on the chill, a first sign of fall finally on its way. He wrapped his jacket around her shoulders, leaving his arm in place. Plans were made for the following day, an afternoon walk in the woods once she was free of clinic duties. He would bring a light picnic and a better wine. At the door to her parents’ apartment he drew her close.

  He took his time walking back across the valley to his room, intrigued by her charm and laughter, disturbed by her unflinching acceptance of the new Germany.

  chapter sEVEN

  The Duisberg House at the foot of the castle ramparts had long been the most desirable housing available to foreign students. For three years it had been Ryan’s delight to climb up from the Old Town toward the fine old building, the canopy of ancient trees gradually opening to reveal this stately structure, his Marburg home.

  His favorite pastime was to grab a book and walk up from the house through the arched gate to the outer yard of the castle, climb over the battlement, then settle on the slope of a buttress. There he would tamp tobacco into his pipe, sit on his folded jacket, and lean back against the stone wall warmed by the sun. With his home, the city and the valley spread out below him in grand panorama, he would immerse himself in his history studies.

  Strength of character and academic excellence were the historical guidelines in determining who won a coveted room in the Duisberg House. Now “racial purity” was taking precedence. Jewish students were being evicted from all university-sponsored housing, and the Nuremberg Laws instituted during the summer by the National Socialist government meant that soon no Jew would study in the Reich.

  Tensions had mounted as the majority of the university’s students joined the wave of enthusiasm for the Nazi regime, and whole fraternities voted to join the SA as a group. Many of Ryan’s friends and acquaintances swore allegiance to the new regime out of concern they would otherwise lose the right to continue their studies. In that year the drab brown-shirted uniforms had become commonplace, where earlier the flashy colored sashes of the fraternities had fought for attention.

  The furtive knock on Ryan’s door one evening startled him from his reading, and he opened the door cautiously. “It’s Franz, Franz Meyer,” the voice barely a whisper. His friend from their “Little League of Nations” appeared distraught. “Got a moment? It’s important.”

  Franz was in his final year of law study. The slight-of-build German was distinguished by an unruly mop of auburn hair which hung off his forehead in unconscious mockery of the Führer. The wire-framed eyeglasses with round lenses gave him a studious air. Ryan enjoyed his company and dry sense of humor, which always enlivened the gatherings of their international group.

  Tonight, however, an obviously distraught Franz slipped into Ryan’s room and closed the door with utmost care, as if normal shutting might draw attention from the entire house. No one had yet retired for the night, so strains of radio music and subdued conversation still pervaded the floor. Somewhere below a student fretted with a violin. Franz stepped to the open window and shuttered it before turning to his baffled friend.

  “Ryan, I’m in trouble and need to talk.” Ryan read the stress on his friend’s face. “You’re American, so you’re my only choice in this.”

  “Take it easy, Franz. Have a brandy and tell me what’s going on.”


  “No, nothing for me, thanks, I can’t afford to relax, this is too important. No one here knows yet, but my mother is…” He glanced again at the closed window, as if expecting it to burst open to expose his secret to the world. “My mother’s Jewish.” Franz slumped to the sofa, unburdened at last. “There you have it. I’m Jewish.” He stared at the polished tips of his boots.

  Ryan was instantly on alert. Now he cast his eyes quickly to both door and window, for there was much spying within the house and several of his friends had been denounced for purported lack of “political dependability.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “That’s just it—by tomorrow, everyone will. There’s a student in my civil law seminar I’ve had words with, Kurt Schlosser. I bested him in a debate and he couldn’t stomach the loss. As luck would have it, he spent the weekend in the Ruhr visiting some girl. My father has a good-sized foundry and we’re well known thereabouts, and somehow he found out about my mother. Who knows who’ll squeal these days, right? In any case, word’s out.”

  “Have they been harassed?”

  “They’ve pretty much left them alone despite the racial laws, because the foundry’s vital to rearmament. They put a Nazi at my father’s side to learn the business, but so far my family’s still in charge. But now my folks know it’s a short fuse, and this afternoon that bastard Schlosser stopped me after seminar and broadcast publicly that I’ll be kicked out of the university. My God, Ryan, I only have one semester left before my state exams! Once the university finds out I’m Jewish, it’s all over.” He shook his head. “Three years’ study into the toilet.” His eyes remained glued to the toes of his boots. “Dammit, I’ll probably end up shining shoes.”

  Ryan actually knew little about Jews. He remembered helping black-ball the Buick dealer’s son who wanted to join his Kansas University fraternity, but certainly not out of prejudice or hatred. The student simply wouldn’t have fit in. After all, he wasn’t one of them—not Presbyterian, Episcopalian, not even Methodist. The Jewish boy would not have felt at home, and Ryan had given his action no further thought. Until this evening.

  The anti-Semitic tirades of the National Socialists had become so omnipresent lately that he paid them little heed. After all, the Jews lived primarily in a world apart, much like the Negroes in Kansas. The Catholic seamstress who darned his socks was convinced of Hitler’s greatness, that Nazi venom against her own faith would have no lasting effect, but she warned him only to visit his Jewish cobbler’s shop by night should he continue to frequent a non-Aryan business. And then, in a small village east of Marburg, he had heard an old peasant woman rant as she swept out the rustic church with a twig broom. She condemned the Jews for her poverty, periodically punctuating her argument with a swig of schnapps from a flask hidden in her heavy skirt. He asked about Jews she personally knew. “You don’t have to know vermin to despise them,” she spat out, “they should all be dead.” This intensity of hatred revealed a prejudice more virulent and deeply-rooted than he had imagined. And now he was witnessing first-hand its effect on someone he knew and liked.

  “I’m sorry for my ignorance, Franz, but won’t this anti-Semitic thing fade away once they consolidate control? It has to be just a matter of time before taking back pre-war German territories takes priority.”

  “Come on, Ryan, you’re the history student, anti-Semitism is never out of fashion. First off, we’re the Christ-killers. We supposedly crucified your messiah just because he called official dogma into doubt. One can’t allow the questioning of authority to lead to torture and murder, right?”

  The allusion to the Gestapo hung in the air. Ryan poured himself a brandy and handed one to his friend. “Have a small one, as long as you’re here.” Franz tossed back the amber liquid with a nod of thanks.

  “Then we Jews brought the plague to Europe, of course, because only God’s Chosen People could be responsible for such divine wrath, right? And, unlike the Christians, we weren’t forbidden to lend money at interest, so some of us did get very rich subsidizing their noble lifestyle, their wars and crusades. Then these same noblemen killed us off to confiscate our fortunes.” Franz held up the glass for a refill. “And now, depending on the day of the week, we’re either the most rapacious capitalists manipulating the world’s wealth at Germany’s expense, the most virulent communists robbing every German of the fruits of his honest labor, or both in one, no matter how self-contradictory that may appear.”

  A sudden thump in the hallway. They stared and waited. Nothing. Ryan approached cautiously, put an ear to the door before opening a fraction, checked out the corridor. Relieved, he slid the bolt home. He found some patriotic music on the radio and turned up the volume.

  “My favorite of them all, Ryan? We Jews are determined to pollute the Germanic bloodline. Yes, it’s true! We’ll either poison the purity of the Aryan race by marrying their good women, or, failing that, rape their daughters and wives at the drop of a hat.” Franz’s arm shot up in mock salute. “Lock up your women, Kameraden!”

  His eyes returned to the toes of his boots. “You know, my American friend, we’re really just Menschen, some stinking rich, many more miserably poor. Good, honest ones who’ll give you the coat off their backs, and cunning ones who’ll stab you in the back. But when anyone needs a convenient scapegoat, we take the historical prize.” Franz sat back on the couch, grabbed a cushion and gave it a powerful punch.

  “So what will you do?”

  “It’s not just me, Ryan. There are more of us here than you would ever guess.”

  Franz revealed that several of Ryan’s other friends were hiding their Jewish heritage, and all were terrified. Ryan had felt their fear but not known their special cause, because everyone he knew was frightened: afraid to speak on the phone, to write letters, to whisper a comment on a street corner. Windows were kept shut when students gathered in a room so that nothing was overheard. Foreign radio broadcasts were avoided for fear of denunciation and arrest. A friend had asked Ryan to notify his family in case he suddenly disappeared. The local minister was removed from his church in the night and presumed to be in a concentration camp, where “enemies of the state,” political opponents and those unwilling to work were incarcerated for the good of the Reich.

  “I can’t see how I can help, Franz, as much as I might wish to.”

  “But you can, Ryan, take me with you back to America,” he pleaded. “Come on, I’ll be your janitor, I’ll run your lift, haul your garbage, do anything you ask. Just get me out.”

  The plaintive note left Ryan searching for a suitable response, and he found none.

  For days afterward he agonized over his standing in the doctoral rolls were he to side with the Duisberg evictees. A personal choice became clear to him. He certainly wasn’t bold enough to speak out publicly against the injustice, but would silently protest by relinquishing his own beloved room, the castle above, the city below. It was a gesture of support for his friends, hollow perhaps, but with far-reaching consequences. With little time remaining before his passage home, he was able to rent a basement room across the Lahn beneath the hillside home of the local chief of police, and he began to pack up his belongings.

  He and his evicted friends were assembling possessions outside the Duisberg House when five uniformed men strutted up the road, seemingly headed toward the café terrace of Büchings-Garten at the foot of the castle. The Brownshirt attire foretold possible trouble for the evictees, and the Nazis immediately circled Ryan’s group, mocking and taunting. Then one of the gang stepped forward to knock over a stack of suitcases and boxed books. When the owner tried to protest, he too was shoved onto the tumbled pile in the street.

  The obvious Nazi leader was cut in classic Teutonic mold, with a strong chin, narrow face and piercing blue eyes. He immediately singled out Ryan when the American offered a hand to the bullied student. “Perhaps we should have torched more than just their books,” he said, gesturing to the fallen student trying to rise to his feet. Works by
“degenerate” authors black-balled by the government had been burned in Nazi bonfires across the country in the spring of the previous year. The state-sponsored pyres had been made even more incendiary with vicious beatings inspired by the Propaganda Ministry.

  “If you spent more time reading books than burning them, perhaps you'd learn to temper your ignorance,” Ryan spat out, wishing immediately he’d held his tongue.

  At that moment an old Ford rattled up the hill, its raucous horn and backfire announcing the arrival of transport for the evicted residents. Several young men sprang from the automobile and joined the increasingly angry evictees in facing down their uniformed tormentors. Now outnumbered, the troublemakers heckled the new arrivals with a few final insults, then turned toward the beer garden, laughing as they went.

  At the top of the rise their leader turned and shouted down to Ryan: “This isn't over yet, Yid-lover.”

  Pointedly ignoring the challenge, Ryan removed his pipe from his jacket pocket, tamped the bowl, and struck a match. Releasing smoke into the air above his head, he turned and smiled up the hill.

  The announcement of the visitor to his fraternity house came as a surprise to René. He had been trudging through Richard Dana's Two Years before the Mast when Ryan showed up. He hurriedly set the memoir aside, admitting at last that he should have chosen the German translation. They hadn't planned to meet until the following day. René had just returned to town, and Ryan, preparing for the oral defense of his dissertation, had been less available for walks. Seeing his friend in the foyer, René knew at first glance something was amiss.

  “Catch you at a bad time?” Ryan’s habitual smile was missing. “It’s quite urgent,”

  “Come in, we can talk in the library.”