Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(72)
Bibi waited, watching as the old woman sipped her second cup of tea.
At last Halina said, “Hitler was a bit of a pagan, but not entirely that. A vegetarian. He would not allow mice to be killed when they invaded his house in numbers. He believed that the fatherland, German land, had a mystical power that could be drawn upon by the volk, the people of pure German blood. He wasn’t a Christian, could not be one, because of Christianity’s roots in Judaism, so the layered occult system that grew from Christianity—angels, demons, witches, séances, all of that and more—was of no interest to him. But the idea that there was mystical power in German earth and that the pure-blooded volk could draw upon it to become supermen…that is indisputably an occult concept.”
Bibi said, “It didn’t work out well for him.”
“I’m not a big believer in most things occult,” Halina said. “But I do believe the world is a more mysterious place than we often recognize—or care to admit. If there is some strange natural power in the earth under us, some magnetic current yet undiscovered, and if there are individuals who can tap it, then they’re probably those men we say have charisma. Not silly movie stars and singers, not the cheap charisma of entertainers. I’m speaking now of those with great charisma, the power to infect enormous numbers of others with their ego-driven fantasies. Hitler. Stalin. Mao.”
Although Bibi had added sweetener to her second cup, she wasn’t enjoying the tea. She slid it aside.
Halina said, “The Hindu saint Ramakrishna said that when a man becomes a saint, followers swarm to him as wasps to honey. Because he had to become holy to achieve his charisma, a saint won’t misuse that power, that control over others. But if a common man, a volk, with no saintly quality, with in fact an inflated ego, a narcissist, should tap into this magnetic current or whatever, he could draw legions to him…and lead the world to ruin.”
Bibi was disappointed. “And that’s the extent of his occult leanings? The mystical power of German land? You never read anything about him being interested in any kind of divination?”
“No.”
“He was never intrigued by séances, mediums, ceromancy, halomancy, necromancy, that kind of thing?”
“Not to my knowledge. But I am not the world’s primary expert on Adolf Hitler.”
From her purse, Bibi withdrew the electronic key attached to the Lucite fob. Indicating the encased wasp, she said, “Something about this feels occult to me.”
Halina Berg’s eyes widened. She fisted her hands as if to prevent herself from reaching for—and touching—the exotic object. “A wasp in the posture of stinging,” the old woman said, “was the official symbol they chose for themselves, just the unit of the Schutzstaffel garrisoned at Theresienstadt.”
“Schutzstaffel? The SS?”
“Hitler’s praetorian guard, shock troops, his supreme instrument of terror. The primary symbol of the SS was a death’s head. But the unit running Theresienstadt likened itself to Der Führer’s Wespe, his wasp, the sting behind his policies and directives. The camp commandant had the image on his door.”
Returning the key and the wasp to her purse, Bibi said, “I’m sorry if I’ve distressed you.”
Halina opened her fisted hands and then closed them around her cooling cup of tea. “It’s just a thing, a bug in plastic, it should not disturb me. It’s only a coincidence anyway, a novelty key chain. It has nothing to do with Theresienstadt.” She took a sip of her bitter tea. “The fools never seemed to realize they were comparing themselves to an insect.”
“Did the wasp have any occult meaning for them, for the SS unit that ran the ghetto?”
“No. Not that I was aware. Although…” She became thoughtful, staring into her tea as if to discern something in its darkness. “For a few months, there was one Gypsy in the ghetto. He’d been sent there by mistake. Jews and Gypsies were imprisoned separately, and always exterminated with groups of their own. The camp commandant should have sent the Gypsy elsewhere, but he delayed for two months, three, maybe longer. There were rumors that a small group of SS officers were intrigued by the Gypsy’s readings…palms, castings of wax, maybe even a crystal ball. But I don’t know if there was any truth to the gossip. The wasp symbol had been there before the Gypsy…and it was there after.”
They remained at the table awhile longer, but they said no more about Hitler or about the occult, or about charisma, as if they both felt that they had drawn too close to some line they must not cross, as if to speak further of these things, just then, would be to invite malice upon them. They spoke of trivial matters. They did not return to the subject of Bibi’s novel. When a decade faded from Halina’s face, when the music came into her voice once more, and when she smiled as she had first smiled while standing on the front stoop, Bibi felt that the time had come to go, although she promised that she would return.
That March afternoon, the westering sun cast off silver rather than golden rays, minting piles of coins from scattered altocumulus clouds that glimmered against a faded-blue sky. At street level, it was a bright but curiously dreary light that made the 55 freeway and then the 73 toll road seem like metaled causeways between nothing and nowhere, and all the racing vehicles like robots engaged in heartless tasks centuries after the abolition of humanity.