F. Paul Wilson - The Keep

"Yes," Magda replied, backing away toward her father. "What do you want?"

"We are looking for Theodor Cuza. Where is he?" His eyes lingered on Magda's face.

"I am he," Papa said.

Magda was at his side, her hand resting protectively atop the high wooden back of his wheelchair. She was trembling. She had dreaded this day, had hoped it would never come. But now it looked as if they were to be dragged off to some resettlement camp where her father would not survive the night. They had long feared that the anti-Semitism of this regime would become an institutionalized horror similar to Germany's.

The two guardsmen looked at Papa. The one to the rear, who seemed to be in charge, stepped forward and withdrew a piece of paper from his belt. He glanced down at it, then up again.

"You cannot be Cuza. He's fifty-six. You're too old!"

"Nevertheless, I am he."

The intruders looked at Magda. "Is this true? This is Professor Theodor Cuza, formerly of the University of Bucharest?"

Magda found herself mortally afraid, breathless, unable to speak, so she nodded.

The two Iron Guards hesitated, obviously at a loss as to what to do.

"What do you want of me?" Papa asked.

"We are to bring you to the rail station and accompany you to the junction at Campina where you will be met by representatives of the Third Reich. From there—"

"Germans? But why?"

"It is not for you to ask! From there—"

"Which means they don't know either," Magda heard her father mutter.

"—you will be escorted to the Dinu Pass."

Papa's face mirrored Magda's surprise at their destination, but he recovered quickly.

"I would love to oblige you, gentlemen," Papa said, spreading his twisted fingers, encased as always in cotton gloves, "for there are few places in the world more fascinating than the Dinu Pass. But as you can plainly see, I'm a bit infirm at the moment."

The two Iron Guards stood silent, indecisive, eyeing the old man in the chair. Magda could sense their reactions. Papa looked like an animated skeleton with his thin, glossy, dead-looking skin, his balding head fringed with wisps of white hair, his stiff fingers looking thick and crooked and gnarled even through the gloves, and his arms and neck so thin there seemed to be no flesh over the bones. He looked frail, fragile, brittle. He looked eighty. Yet their papers said to find a man of fifty-six.

"Still you must come," the leader said.

"He can't!" Magda cried. "He'll die on a trip like that!"

The two intruders glanced at each other. Their thoughts were easy to read: They had been told to find Professor Cuza and see that he got to the Dinu Pass as quickly as possible. And alive, obviously. Yet the man before them did not look as if he would make it to the station.

"If I have the expert services of my daughter along," she heard her father say, "I shall perhaps be all right."

"No, Papa! You can't!" What was he saying?

"Magda ... these men mean to take me. If I am to survive, you must come along with me." He looked up at her, his eyes commanding. "You must."

"Yes, Papa." She could not imagine what he had in mind, but she had to obey. He was her father.

He studied her face. "Do you realize the direction in which we will be traveling, my dear?"

He was trying to tell her something, trying to key something in her mind. Then she remembered her dream of a week ago, and the half-packed suitcase still sitting under her bed.

"North!"

Their two Iron Guard escorts were seated across the aisle of the passenger car from them, engaged in low conversation when they were not trying to visually pierce Magda's heavy clothing. Papa had the window seat, his hands double gloved, leather over cotton and folded in his lap. Bucharest was sliding away behind them. A fifty-three-mile trip by rail lay ahead—thirty-five miles to Ploiesti and eighteen miles north of there to Campina. After that the going would be rough. She prayed it would not be too much for him.

"Do you know why I had them bring you along?" he said in his dry voice.

"No, Papa. I see no purpose in either of us going. You could have got out of it. All they need do is have their superiors look at you and they'd know you're not fit to travel."

"They wouldn't care. And I'm fitter than I look—not well, by any standard, but certainly not the walking cadaver I appear to be."

"Don't talk like that!"

"I stopped lying to myself long ago, Magda. When they told me I had rheumatoid arthritis, I said they were wrong. And they were: I had something worse. But I've accepted what's happening to me. There's no hope, and there's not that much more time. So I think I should make the best of it."

"You don't have to rush it by allowing them to drag you up to the Dinu Pass!"

"Why not? I've always loved the Dinu Pass. It's as good a place to die as any. And they were going to take me no matter what. I'm wanted up there for some reason and they are intent on getting me there, even in a hearse." He looked at her closely. "But do you know why I told them I had to have you along?"

Magda considered the question. Her father was ever the teacher, ever playing Socrates, asking question after question, leading his listener to a conclusion. Magda often found it tedious and tried to reach the conclusion as swiftly as possible. But she was too tense at the moment for even a halfhearted attempt at playing along.

"To be your nurse, as usual," she snapped. "What else?" She regretted the words as soon as she uttered them, but her father seemed not to notice. He was too intent on what he wanted to say to take offense.

"Yes!" he said, lowering his voice. "That's what I want them to think. But it's really your chance to get out of the country! I want you to come to the Dinu Pass with me, but when you get the chance—at the first opportunity—I want you to run off and hide in the hills!"

"Papa, no!"

"Listen to me!" he said, leaning his face toward her ear. "This chance will never come again. We've been in the Alps many times. You know the Dinu Pass well. Summer's coming. You can hide for a while and then make your way south."

"To where?"

"I don't know—anywhere! Just get yourself out of the country. Out of Europe! Go to America! To Turkey! To Asia! Anywhere, but go!"

"A woman traveling alone in wartime," Magda said, staring at her father and trying to keep her voice from sounding scornful. He wasn't thinking clearly. "How far do you think I'd get?"

"You must try!" His lips trembled.

"Papa, what's wrong?"

He looked out the window for a long time, and when he finally spoke his voice was barely audible.

"It's all over for us. They're going to wipe us off the face of the Continent."

"Who?"

"Us! Jews! There's no hope left for us in Europe. Perhaps somewhere else."

"Don't be so—"

"It's true! Greece has just surrendered! Do you realize that since they attacked Poland a year and a half ago they haven't lost a battle? No one has been able to stand up to them for more than six weeks! Nothing can stop them! And that madman who leads them intends to eradicate our kind from the face of the earth! You've heard the tales from Poland—it's soon going to be happening here! The end of Romanian Jewry has been delayed only because that traitor Antonescu and the Iron Guard have been at each other's throats. But it seems they've settled their differences during the past few months, so it won't be long now."

"You're wrong, Papa," Magda said quickly. This kind of talk terrified her. "The Romanian people won't allow it."

He turned on her, his eyes blazing. " 'Won't allow it?' Look at us! Look at what has happened so far! Did anyone protest when the government began the 'Romanianization' of all property and industry in the hands of Jews? Did a single one of my colleagues at the university—trusted friends for decades!—so much as question my dismissal? Not one! Not one! And has one of them even stopped by to see how I am?" His voice was beginning to crack. "Not one!"