"At once, Herr Colonel," Vogel replied. "What
should
I tell the
Reichsführer
?"
Schlacht thought for a moment. "Tell him that the experiment is a complete success. Tell him that the Führer will soon have an invulnerable army." The bright moonlight
reflected madly in his blue eyes as he smiled and
whispered,
as much to himself as to Vogel, "Tell him that we
have won
the war."
L
ouisa von Weyrauch stood in the middle of the dank
cell, her arms folded angrily across her chest, listening to
Petraâ¦no,
Claudia,
she reminded herself,
Claudiaâ¦
as she
spoke to her old companion Kaldy. The latter sat on the cold
stones and listened to her discourse intently, his thin
fingers absentmindedly drawing five pointed stars in the dust on the floor. Claudia was speaking in Italian and Kaldy
was responding in Romansch, which allowed both Louisa and Blasko to understand them, though as yet neither had taken part in the conversation.
The woman known to her previously as Petra Loewenstein and known to her now as Claudia Procula, the one time wife of Pontius Pilate, had entered the cell the previous evening, had screamed at Kaldy for an hour, and then had stormed out. Louisa had spent the entire night and most of the morning trying to find her, knowing that the full moon
was still twelve hours away, wanting desperately to talk to
her, to question her, to try to understand. As her husband Gottfried, unbeknownst to Louisa, sat in a prisoners' barracks in the camp at Hunyad, awaiting the coming night with terrified dread, Louisa had returned to Kaldy's cell to tell him that she had been unable to find the woman. To her great surprise she found Claudia standing in front of Kaldy and Blasko, speaking to her ancient companion in quiet, calm, even tones. Claudia's rage of the previous evening had apparently faded into acceptance. Louisa listened silently, at first fascinated and then horrified and infuriated at what she was hearing.
"It was rather simple, really," Claudia was saying. "After you and I parted company, I wandered around
Central Europe
and listened to the things people were talking about in cafés and beer halls and bistros. I realized that you and I had largely isolated ourselves from the incredible expansion of scientific knowledge which seems to have occurred over the past few centuries."
"And you began to believe that chemistry might provide you with a clue to our condition and give you a means of dying," Kaldy nodded.
"I'm
impressed, Claudia. That never occurred to me, not once, not at all. But how did you manage
to fabricate such an identity for yourself? I mean, you must
have had to forge records and..."
"Not at
all,"
she replied. "There really
was
a Petra
Loewenstein, and her parents
were
killed by a werewolf."
"By you," he said as if it were an obvious fact.
"Of course. It took me a few years to find the right family and the right girl, but when I finally did, the plan was a very simple one. I needed a husband and wife with one daughter of about five years of age and no living relatives, who lived in a small town and kept a regular schedule which included a periodic and predictable absence of the child from the home at night."
Kaldy allowed himself a slight smile. "Rather specific
criteria."
"Of necessity. It wasn't easy to find them, but
eventually I found the Loewensteins. Their daughter
Petra
spent every other Saturday night and Sunday morning at a convent some forty miles from their home. She was in a special choir, or some such thing. I waited until her absence from home corresponded to the night of a full moon, and then went to her parent's home just before sunset and told them that I was from the convent and wanted to discuss Petra's vocal training. They invited me in, of course, and then I pulled a gun from my purse. I had the woman tie up the man, then I tied her up..."
"And then you waited. And when the change came you killed them both," Kaldy
finished for her.
"Causing their daughter to be placed in an orphanage,
yes," Claudia went on. "For the next twelve years, while she was growing up. I was working for the Farben company..."
"The what?" Kaldy asked.
"I.G. Farben." Louisa muttered. "A major chemical corporation."
"Yes, precisely." Claudia said. "All I did there was clean the floors, wash off the laboratory tables and such
simple manual tasks, but by keeping my eyes and ears open
and asking questions of some of the more talkative chemists, I was able to absorb quite a bit of knowledge about chemistry."
"Let me anticipate you, Claudia," Kaldy broke in. "When the child
Petra
was old enough to go to the university, you
killed her and took her place."
"Yes, but I went through the application and
interviewing procedures myself. The girl would never have
gone to the university. She was not particularly intelligent."
"And yet she had the right to live," Louisa said softly.
"What?" Claudia asked.
Louisa looked at her hatefully. "I said that she had the
right to 1ive!"
Claudia gazed at the other woman for a few moments and
then, as if Louisa had said nothing at all, she returned her attention to Kaldy and continued.
"It was very difficult for me to adjust to imitating a normal human life, but I managed to keep from being ejected from the university. I did quite well in my studies of chemistry, of course, but I was an absolute ignoramus when it came to the other disciplines. But I persevered, and eventually I received my degree."
Kaldy frowned. "But why bother with all that, Claudia?
If you were learning about these matters at Farben, why go
to all the trouble of obtaining a formal education?"
She leaned forward and looked at him intently. "Because if I were to have any chance at all of learning how the two of us might be able to die, I would have to be in a position to conduct my own research, which meant I needed a staff position as a chemist, either with a company or with the government. No one would have allowed a scrub woman to do
research
!"
He nodded. "That makes sense. But how did you get
involved with this, with Schlacht?"
"Well, initially I wasn't involved with this project,"
she replied. "I managed to obtain a position as a staff chemist at a hospital in
Marburg
, in Hessen. While I was there I learned that Dr. Mengele was conducting genetic
experiments at
Auschwitz
. It was, of course, genetic chemistry
which was vital to me, and so I contacted Mengele and
asked to join his research team. And then, when Himmler ordered Mengele to assign one of his chemists to a project
dealing with lycanthropy..."
"Yes," Kaldy said. "You volunteered."
"I more than volunteered. I begged. I didn't know that you were here, Janos. In fact, I had hoped that the Germans
had captured another of our kind so that I might question him."
He smiled with amusement. "And when you learned that I
was to be the subject of these experiments, you tried to
hide your identity from me behind that foolish mask?"
She returned his smile sadly. "You recognized me, of
course."
"Of course," he replied. "All I could see were your
eyes, but I have looked at those eyes for two thousand
years."
"Wait, Herr Kaldy," Louisa said. "Do you mean that you
have known all along that
Petra
... I mean, that Claudia..."
"I recognized her immediately," he replied.
She gaped at him. "Then why didn't you tell us?"
He shrugged. "Why should I have? You are a pleasant person, Louisa. I enjoy conversing with you and I bear you no ill will, but I owe you nothing. And I owe your husband and Colonel Schlacht less than nothing." He paused. "Besides, there was always the remote chance that Claudia might learn something of
value to us both."
"But I have not," Claudia sighed. "Oh, Janos, I was so
disappointed to learn that it was you whom the Germans had captured. I knew that you would have no vital information. You have never had anything to say that could be of help to us."
He sighed. "No. And the memories that Weyrauch
has been able to awaken in me have done nothing but remind me of my own frustrations. He has taken me back two thousand
years,
Claudia, and
still
I do not understand."
Her eyes narrowed and grew suddenly cold. "At least I
know for certain now that it was you who visited this living
hell upon me.
"
He smiled. "And are you angry at me, Claudia? Do you
think it was an act of volition on my part, of free will, that I made a
rational decision to share my curse with you?"
She stared at him for a few moments, and then her eyes softened, and she emitted a curt laugh. "No, Janos, of course not."
"So you forgive me?"
"I have to forgive you. We can't help ourselves, neither of us." Claudia heard Louisa mumble something, and she looked once again at her and asked. "What did you say?"
"I said that you are a
liar,"
Louisa spat. "You can't
help yourself! Ha! Who forced you to kill that family and that child? This whole project in
Budapest
has depended on
treating innocent people as if they were laboratory rats! How many people have you killed with your damned injections? And what exactly did you do with Mengele at
Auschwitz
, tell
me that!"
"Try to be logical," Claudia said coldly. "Over the past
two thousand years I must have killed tens of thousands of people. If I can find a way to die, my death will prevent me
from killing tens of thousands of others over the centuries
to come. If I must kill a few dozen in order to save those tens of thousands, is it not worth the price? Besides, I have an overriding need..."
"You hypocrite! You're as bad as my husband! He at least
has the excuse of cowardice!"
"I won't make any excuses for my actions, Louisa,"
Claudia said evenly. "You say that these people had a right to live. Well, I have a right to die!"
"No one has the right to kill innocent people," Louisa
shouted, "not you, not Helmuth, not Hitler, no one!"
Claudia laughed bitterly and looked away. "You are an
idealist, Madam."
"No, I am a Christian," she shot back. "But Christian,
Jew, Buddhist, Hindu or...or...or anything else,
the basic moral teaching is always the same. One must accept
one's own death rather than allow the innocent to perish!"
"I suggest you reserve your sermons for your husband,"
she said wearily. "I have no need of them."
"My husband?! That weak, hopeless creature?" Louisa grunted with disgust.
"It is good that you have no affection for him," Claudia said. "Schlacht plans to kill him."
Louisa was silent for a few moments, and then said, "Then it is justice, is it not? A minister of God who puts his own survival above his duty to righteousness deserves to be consumed by the evil thing he serves!"
Claudia and Louisa were too busy arguing with each other
to notice Janos Kaldy frown and stop the drawing movement of
his fingers as he heard Louisa's words. Blasko saw, however, and watched his friend closely. Something, the old
Gypsy realized, was amiss.
"My goodness!" Claudia observed, her voice laced with
sarcasm. "Aren't you the little saint!"
"All I am is an honest woman." Louisa shouted back. "If
the choice were mine to make, I would choose death before I
would choose murder!"
"Well," Claudia said casually, "you will probably have the opportunity to make that choice. Helmuth has decided to send you off to one of the camps." Louisa blanched, and her
lips began to tremble, but the angry fire in her eyes did
not fade. "You could probably talk him out of
it,
of course, by representing yourself to him as a loyal German
who has finally seen the error of her ways." She smiled. "You would probably make a very convincing Nazi, Louisa."
"Never!" she screamed. "The Lord Jesus Christ died for
me! Am I now to cling to my life by denying the truth which
gives
meaning
to my
life?!"
Kaldy's head snapped up and he stared off into the
distance, his face suffused with astonishment and shock and pain. Blasko leaned over and placed his hand on Kaldy's
shoulder. "Janos? Is something wrong?" Kaldy did not reply.
His already pale and wan face lost what color it had, and his body began to tremble.