Page 13 of Library of Forbidden Books

Helene glanced at his wounds and ran for the medicine bag. She pulled out rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, and a bandage.

Dr. Vichow drank the water Derek offered feverishly, not bothering to wipe the part that dribbled out of his busted lip.

Helene cleaned his cuts and stopped the blood from his nose as best she could between the professor’s wincing. Several minutes later, he was calmer.

Next the young couple had to solve the problem of the professor’s clothing, covered as it was in blood and something that smelled of rotten eggs.

“Derek, will you go check in the back and see if there are any of Klaus’s clothes? Sometimes he leaves a change in the office.”

Derek came back with pants and a jacket, and they helped the professor change. His body was covered in bruises, and every fiber of his being seemed to be in pain. Once he had the clean jacket on, he started to look more like himself.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Helene asked gently.

“This morning in class, I spoke out against the boycott. Half of my students wear SA uniforms, as if they were back in grammar school. They didn’t let me finish class. They came up and started hitting me without even saying a word. Then they rubbed rotten eggs all over me.”

Helene gasped. “What did the rest of the class do? What about the other professors, and the staff—did no one intervene?”

“The dean told me I’d better leave before they killed me, that I shouldn’t come back, and that he’d work out early retirement for me. ‘It would be better for everyone that way,’ he said. His eyes were sad, but his tone was firm, like someone was listening in.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Helene said, sitting beside him and gently resting her arm across his shoulders. At her kind gesture, Dr. Vichow began to weep. It was hard to tell what was sobbing and what was labored breathing through his broken nose.

“You can’t go back home. It’s too dangerous. Those fanatics are capable of anything, and they won’t be held accountable. Come with us.”

Derek glanced at Helene. They could not put themselves at risk like that. But Helene nodded firmly.

“Could you bring the car around?” she asked Derek. “I’d rather it be seen that we’re leaving.”

Against his better judgment, Derek did as his fiancé asked.

A few minutes later, the Mercedes was at the door. They got Dr. Vichow seated in the back and then headed to Helene’s apartment.

“I don’t trust Sebastian. Can you distract him while I get Dr. Vichow to the service elevator?”

The Nazi web had extended even to the apartment’s doorkeeper. Sebastian was a conceited old man who acted like his concierge uniform was equivalent to that of a Prussian general. His stand was covered with the Nazi periodicals he pored over daily, though most of the press had gone pro-Nazi by then. Few journalists were willing to stand up to or criticize Hitler and his henchmen.

At Pariser Platz, Derek parked a few yards from the front door and then went inside the apartment building. Sebastian’s mustache had recently been trimmed to imitate Hitler’s. Derek struck up a lively conversation with the man and managed to get him to turn his back to the door while Helene slipped in with Dr. Vichow and disappeared into the service elevator.

“. . . quite strange, truly. So you’re telling me that no packages whatsoever have been delivered for me at this address?”

“No, none at all, sir. Perhaps it will arrive tomorrow,” Sebastian offered, taken aback that the officer was speaking to him at all.

A few minutes later, Derek entered the apartment and found Dr. Vichow huddled over a cup of hot tea.

“How have we come to this?” Derek asked aloud to the universe.

The tea had revived Dr. Vichow enough that he could speak with almost his normal cadence. “Fear begets hatred, and whoever talks loudest can light a fire in the minds of simple folk. The Germans are fed up with instability, inflation, and being humiliated. This Austrian promises to make them a strong people again. One time I listened to one of his speeches live on the radio. I did it intentionally so that I could really understand his message. I was terrified when I realized his words had almost seduced me—someone who knows all the oratory and homiletic secrets, coming as I do from a long line of Lutheran pastors and theologians.” The old man’s words reverberated in the dark living room, lit only by the lights from the street outside.

He continued, “Soon the swastika will be everywhere, the blood-red color and hooked cross leading the world to evil. I’ll stand up to it with the last drop of my own blood!” Dr. Vichow had leaned forward and raised his fist as high as his bruised muscles would allow him.

“Quieter, please!” Derek begged. “These walls are paper-thin.” He did not want all three of them to end up in the basement of the downtown building that Göring was turning into headquarters for a new police force called the Gestapo.

The old man crumbled again. “I’m so sorry . . . I didn’t mean to . . .” and he drained his teacup.

“We’ve got to get you out of the country,” Helene said.

“No, I’m not leaving,” Dr. Vichow vowed.

“You’ll do more good abroad than here. You’ve already lost your post, but in Poland or Denmark you can denounce what’s going on. That’s how you can stand up to Hitler and his gang.”