The Secret of Lions (21 page)

My art history teacher had spent most of
this semester trying to uncover the Jewish secrets locked in Da
Vinci’s paintings. He said there was evidence that Leonardo da
Vinci was part Jewish on his mother’s side.

After art we studied grammar and foreign
language. I excelled at all fields of study. I had to. In
particular, I performed with excellence in warfare, art, and most
surprisingly, combat. Of course, I did not let on that I could draw
and paint. It was not hard to hide my talents since we did not
spend a lot of time being creative, only learning.

One day, we had a single class in the
morning. It was the special presentation that we had heard about
for months. It was given by the headmaster, Professor Rouscher. The
seminar was on interrogation and prisoners of war; the title kept
changing.

I was nervous about it. The evening before
I’d dreamed about the night when my father had killed the Frenchman
in the basement. It haunted me like a lingering nightmare.

I could see myself standing in that dark
basement in the presence of Hitler and Beowulf. I remembered that
they tortured the Frenchman so brutally. Hitler explained to me
later that the torture was justified and necessary. He convinced me
it was a part of his job. And someday it would be a part of my
job.

Two guards stood outside the double doors
that led down a corridor to the entrance of the crowded auditorium.
They waved at me as I passed by.

Inside the auditorium, I saw my classmates.
They were scattered all over the room. Many of them were seated.
Some of them turned around in their seats so they could talk to the
boys sitting behind them.

The auditorium was full of students. I sat
in the back. Rouscher stood tall on stage, towering over the
student body. He leered at me over the rest of the students. It was
as though he were waiting to call on me to take part in his
demonstration, as though he expected great things from me.

“All right, students. Let’s come to order,”
a stern voice said over the loudspeaker.

I looked up at the stage. Dr. Rouscher stood
dead center. Behind him was a large shroud of darkness. It covered
the whole upper area of the stage. It was particularly dark
directly behind him. I could make out the edges of something in the
darkness. It looked like a giant box.

I could faintly see shapes moving about on
the sides of the stage. I could tell there were guards waiting in
the wings. I could barely see the outline of the curtain. It was
not fully drawn. It stopped on both sides of some oversized
object––the box. It took up a large portion of upstage center.

It must be a crate
, I thought.

“Now students,” Rouscher said. “I have a
very special exercise for you today, and one of you is going to
play a very important role. We are going to discuss interrogation.
More specifically, we are going to discuss the methods of
interrogation.”

The professor looked around the room. His
gaze searched over the students until he finally settled on one,
me.

“Peter Hitler, why don’t you come up here
for a moment?” the professor said.

I reluctantly stood up and trembled
nervously as I looked around the room. All of the other students
gaped at me.

“Peter, why don’t you come up here and stand
next to me,” the professor said while motioning for me––Hitler’s
protégé––to join him in front of everyone.

Grudgingly, I moved down the aisle and the
row to the bottom of the stage. I looked for the steps that led up
and found them on the left side. I made my way up onto the
stage.

“Now, everyone, Peter is going to
participate in our special seminar. We are going to discuss and
observe the means of extracting information from a prisoner.”

“Torture?” someone from the audience
asked.

“Yes, that is what some call it. Now, Peter,
come here and stand beside me,” Professor Rouscher said.

I walked to dead center stage to stand next
to the headmaster. A terrifying feeling came over me. It was
difficult to stop shivering with each step I took.

The professor put his arm around me. “Don’t
worry, Peter. It is only natural you feel fear, compassion, terror,
and even helplessness. You should feel those things. They are all
signs of humanity,” he said, while staring down at me. He raised
his head and stared at the entire student body. Sounds began to
shudder from the darkest part of the stage. The sounds were deep
growling noises. Something was there, but I was not sure what, not
at first.

In the forefront of my mind, I feared what
it might be. I feared it was Mocha, but the noises I heard sounded
nothing like a powerful, majestic beast like Mocha. They were deep
but weak.

“Despite what our military leaders say,
despite what our governments say, the best soldiers in the world,
that is the deadliest ones, are the ones who feel the most. Leaders
are not born from the passionless. The most deadly ideas come from
the most impassioned among us.

“Peter is a natural-born leader because the
passion radiates from him. Besides being from the Führer’s seed,
you can tell that there is rage in him. You can see there is
leadership in him.

“The fear you are feeling, Peter, is your
strength. One day that fear will turn to hatred and later passion,”
Rouscher said. He signaled to one of the soldiers who lingered in
the wings.

The guard followed the professor’s command
and walked to us. He disappeared for a moment into the darkness
upstage behind us. A scuffling sound came from the shadows. Then he
returned into the light. Only now he was dragging a thick, black
chain. He latched the end of it onto a metal clamp on the
floor.

“Okay, release him,” Rouscher said.

The guard returned to the darkness. A sound
of scraping metal followed. It was the sound of a metal cage door
retracting.

The black-maned lion charged out of the
darkness. The length of chain ran out, and the animal stopped
abruptly a few paces from me. He chomped his teeth repeatedly and
roared. The chain held him, but he was visibly strained. The lion
pulled and struggled to reach me but could not.

Mocha, what have they done to you?
I
thought.

He was different. He looked underfed and
barbarically abused. His fur had multiple dark stains on it, like
bludgeoning marks and scars from callous lashings. I’m not even
sure he recognized me.

Some of the children in the audience shifted
in their seats. They became uneasy, even panicked. Some even leapt
out of their chairs and onto their feet. The professor waved his
hands in the air in order to calm them.

“Students, don’t worry. The beast is
perfectly restrained,” he said. Then he turned to me. “Peter, one
of the first things you have to learn about your enemy is that he
will do anything to kill you. It is either you or him. A lion, like
an enemy, seems scary, but actually he is more afraid of you. Now
take this and torture your prisoner.”

Slowly, I turned away from Mocha and saw
that the professor was holding a large iron bar.

“No,” I shook my head in passionate
protest.

“Yes, Peter. Now take it,” Professor
Rouscher insisted.

“No,” I said.

“Peter, you don’t want me to send a message
to your father saying you couldn’t complete a simple assignment, do
you?”

“No, but you can’t make me do this. I can’t.
He’s just afraid. That’s what you said. You said he was just afraid
of us. I can’t hurt him for that. This lion belongs in the wild,
not here.”

“Peter, he was captured for this purpose,”
Rouscher said.

“He is not meant to be tortured. Besides, he
can’t talk. So what good will torturing him bring? What will it
accomplish?”

Rouscher became frustrated. He had never
known me to be insubordinate before. He grabbed my arm and yelled
at me.

“If the roles were reversed, and you were
chained to that floor, that lion would tear you to shreds,”
Rouscher said. He grabbed my hand and forced my fingers to grip the
bar. “Now hit him with it.”

“No. I won’t.” I refused.

“Yes!” Rouscher forced me to face the
creature with the bar raised in my hand. The lion snapped its jaws
as it stretched out to me.

“No. I can’t.” I struggled with
Rouscher.

“YES! HIT HIM! DO IT! HIT HIM!” Rouscher
shouted.

Rouscher pushed me closer to the beast. It
lunged and almost tore off my hand. Mocha didn’t recognize me.

“Mocha, what have they done to you?” I
whispered.

I was forced closer still. I did not want to
look, so I shut my eyes tight. Rouscher continued to push me toward
the lion. I could hear the students in the audience as they joined
in and cheered me on, urging me to hit the lion. The beast lunged
out once more at me. Its hot breath cut through the air and hit my
outstretched hand.

Rouscher kept taunting me, pushing me. I
didn’t know what to do. I didn't know what to think. So without
thinking, without hesitation, even against my own desires, I swung
the iron bar against the lion’s head. The creature retreated a few
meters.

“Again! Do it again!” Professor Rouscher
ordered.

With tears streaming down my face, I raised
the bar again, and with a heart filled with regret, I struck Mocha
across the head. I raised it again and repeated. I hit him
continuously. Blood covered the bar and ran down his face. The
animal could no longer see because blood covered his eyes.

The lion stopped roaring. I beat him with
the bar until the creature completely stopped moving.

The sounds around me had become muted. I was
lost in a blinding rage.

“That’s enough, Peter! Peter, stop!”
Rouscher shouted at me. He grabbed me and tried to restrain me, but
I fought free.

I kept hammering at the lion’s head. Blood
splattered across the hard stage floor. I battered away until I
lost the power to lift my arm.

After I had nearly beaten the lion to death,
I looked up at the professor. Distressed, he stood above me with a
blank stare in his eyes. He did not know what to say. He was
shocked. I looked around at the other students. My hair was
normally slicked back, but now the longest strands in the front
fell across my face, like my father’s. I dropped the iron bar and
stepped back from the pools of blood and my dying friend, my
lion.

“Peter?” Professor Rouscher said.

I did not hear him. Never raising my head, I
began to walk away from the stage. Before I stepped onto the
staircase, Mocha let out a dying growl. Another followed it.

The sounds resonated in my ears. It was the
only thing I heard. The vibration from the dying roar shook my
skull, echoing inside my head. I turned back to the lion that had
once been my friend. I watched as the creature’s head flopped
against the floor. It looked in my direction. Only one of its eyes
was working. The other was mashed shut.

I’m not sure, but I think in the last moment
of life, Mocha finally recognized me.

I had betrayed my only friend.

No longer did I have to worry about
nightmares of the Frenchman. Now the black lion haunted me.

67

Months later, I was on vacation with my
father. We rested on a pristine beach in South Italy. Father had
arranged for us to travel with as much secrecy as he was able to
afford in those days.

The day was hot and sunny, but a nice breeze
brushed over our rocky beach. The Mediterranean was a bright blue.
It was extraordinary how beautiful the water was. It was so clear I
could see dozens of colorful, radiant fish.

I stood near the shoreline with my toes
buried in the sand. A large starfish washed up near me.

“That’s a starfish, son,” Hitler said. He
stood behind me. There were guards several meters behind us, but
the beach was relatively clear.

I said nothing to him. I was furious. I
couldn’t stop thinking of Mocha.

Hitler grinned at me and then looked out
over the water.

“Peter,” he said.

I remained quiet.

“We can just sit here,” he said calmly.

68

Later that night, I was restless in bed. I
dreamed of the black lion I had loved so much.

Unable to stand it anymore, I got out of bed
and sat near candlelight. I used candles because I didn’t want to
get caught working on a painting I kept hidden from Hitler.

This would be the night I finished it. That
night, I worked diligently on the painting––
The Secret of
Lions
. Before I knew it, the night had passed, and it was
morning. I had stayed up the entire night. I didn’t want to sleep.
I didn’t want to dream of the lion. I didn’t want to dream of my
mother.

“What the hell are you doing?” Hitler
shouted from my doorway. I have no idea how long he had been
standing in it, but it was long enough to see me painting, against
his wishes, against his express orders.

“I'm painting. That’s right, Father. I've
been painting for months,” I said defiantly.

“Son, you don’t defy me! No one defies me! I
am your father! I am your Fuhrer!” he shouted.

“You are nothing to me!” I shouted back.

Hitler practically leapt over to me from the
doorway. He grabbed the canvas from my easel and held it up high
with both hands. He stared at it for a long moment. I saw a single
tear come down his face. I knew better than to assume it was a sign
of compassion. He was enraged at my disobedience.

“How dare you defy me! This painting is in
reverence to your enemy!” he shouted.

“My enemy? That lion I murdered was Mocha.
It was my lion. You knew that. Didn’t you? Didn’t you? You sent him
there on purpose! You want me to forget him? You want me to forget
that Mother took me to see him!” I said, suddenly realizing what
his true intentions had been.

Hitler flung the painting to the ground. I
ran toward it, but before I could reach it, he punched me directly
in the nose. Disoriented, I stumbled backward.