Tomahawk and Crown (eBook)

Chapter 1

We learned in school that millions of years ago, the Vienna Woods was the shore of a vast ocean. The scene must have been fantastic, with monster waves crashing into the hills, and huge fish cruising the depths where I am standing now. On the shore, dinosaurs hunted and grazed in jungles of gigantic conifers, ferns, and palms. But a new ice age made the ocean levels drop, and the shores moved towards the east, leaving only fossils from all the weird animals that had been swimming in it. The Danube, a byproduct of the glacial age, ate a hole in the hills that used to be the shore and started flowing eastward, as if searching for the ancient mother sea that had given it life. Eventually, the time of the great wanderings came and the place where the river spilled out into the great plain became a crossroads of cultures and civilization. Celtic salt traders stopped here. The Tenth Roman Legion and the Gemini marched through. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius died in Vindobona of malaria. The Amber Road passed through the plain with long blonde haired Germanic Theones peddling the fossilized remnant of the ancient jungle to the Romans. The high-cheek boned, fur clad Asiatic warriors came next. Bow legged and reeking from a diet rich in mare’s milk, the Alans, Penchenegs, and Hun camped in the delta, their ponies drinking from the Danube. Dr. Braunschweiger said they were bow-legged and constantly stank of fermented mare’s milk. Norman knights came through here on the way to the Holy Land, pillaging, and killing, and maybe raping.

My history teacher in the Realgymnasium said little about that, but he was a very devout Catholic. You probably know about all this, anyway, and of course you know about the centuries when Christian and Turkish armies were chasing each other around here, killing and bleeding. It must have been terrific with all the silk tents, horsehair standards, and battle trumpets. Then, I guess the Habsburgs must have run out of steam. They started building a lot of palaces. The Viennese got fat, and although they listened to operas a lot, told jokes, and were crazy for waltzing, they were also getting nastier to each other. They built those long concrete walls below here to tame the old river. But even back then the river didn’t care. It kept right on going past those filthy stone tenements, left them far behind, and rushed out, free and happy, into the great, open plain. Mrs. Leitameck, the coal woman, said that the Danube hums at night about the fate of all the people who ever lived along the river, and that the waves carry the songs of all those lives with them to the dark waters of the Black Sea.

I tell you this because now that the war has started, there is little music in Vienna. A new army has come to ravage the Danube, although this one came by invitation and since then there has been little music left in this city of music. Really! On the first of December, less than a week ago, they closed up all the ballrooms. They said it was mainly to conserve coal and promised to reopen them in the spring. I could not care less. First, because dancing doesn’t interest me very much. Second, because even if I were old enough to dance, they don’t let Jews into ballrooms. And most importantly, with some luck, I will be leaving Vienna before long.

Anyhow, who cares about ballrooms when your toes are freezing? My friend Tad Saegerer and I were standing at the end of the bridge that crossed the Danube in the trolley stand, waiting for the next tram. It was not doing a great job protecting us from the wind and to keep warm we kept stamping our feet and burying our hands under our arms. But the cold was the least of my worries at that moment. I was worrying about how to explain being so late home. What would I say to Papa? I wished desperately that the trolley would come.

The blackout was still on, but a big, pale moon was racing through the sludgy clouds. It revealed a deserted bridge. Not another human figure was in sight from where Tad and I were standing. This was not unusual for this time of year. The inundation plain behind us was an immensely popular bathing place in the summer, but the wintry cold had emptied it of all life. Outlined in the moonlight, way in the distance across the bridge, were the bulky dark masses of crowded workers’ tenements. Except for Tad and me, no one was crazy enough to be on this side of the river at night at this season of the year. Nothing moved, except maybe the icy gray waters of the river way below the gray steel of the bridge. It was flowing to Slovakia to the new Tiso Slovak state.

“Holy crap,” Tad exclaimed and pointed towards the sky.

I had heard a faint drone in the distance, but now, outlined by the moon, we could see a bomber formation cutting across the moonlit sky.

“Luftwaffe,” he said, bending his tall, skinny frame backward for a better look. “Heinkels! Must be coming home from Poland to get their laurels. Make the Austrian girls happy!” Tad followed the planes with his eyes as the dark wedge floated away from us toward the south. “Setzen sie sich and fich it,” whispered Tad. He knew the expression had amused me ever since he first used it in a Latin class last year when he was having trouble with conjugations. “Suppose those had been British planes. That would wake this town up. Can you just imagine it? Sirens wailing, big lights searching the sky, flak, everything! What a circus? Agreed? Hugi? Agreed?”

Tad had a way of being persistent when he was enthusiastic about something, which was pretty often. This got me thinking about the British bombers and perhaps how they could help us out of this mess. That cheered me up a bit, but it didn’t last long. My immediate problem was not how to end the war, it was what to say to Papa when I got home. It was nearly 8:30 p.m. now. By the time the tram got us across Vienna, it would be nearly ten o’clock. What could I say about being so late? I obviously could not tell him about Tomahawk. That would only get me in more trouble. It would be dangerous to my backside and surely wreck Tad’s and my fabulous plan.

I could imagine my old man pacing through the small apartment like a tiger in a cage. Not a well-cared for and fancy circus cat, but a pale, worn out local carnival beast in a small cage worn out by too many shows. He would mutter something about a worthless son, then he’d say, “My God, thirteen years old and a bum already.” Then the questions would come. Hurled at me like spears. “Where have you been? What trouble have you stirred up now?” After every third sentence, just to twist the blade a little, he would add, “And in times like these!”

He would not understand about the Tomahawk. Papa does not have the stomach for real adventure. He would panic. That is what he would do. For sure, he would panic and do something stupid that would wreck all of our work. I needed an exceptionally good story! The ones I had thought of so far were much too complicated, and Papa would never believe them. If only Tad Saegerer would stop sounding off about those damn airplanes and think up something for me to say. Tad, when he focused, had an outrageous imagination. It was better than anyone’s. He had a well-earned reputation for the best lies, fabrications, and excuses of anyone in the third form of Realgymnasium XVII. But he gets very wild sometimes. Most of the time! I must be more desperate about this than I thought.

“Leave it to me,” said Tad, as we were settling back on the wooden seats in the dimly lit, blacked-out trolley. He ran his hands, one after the other, through his lanky black hair. He always did this to let people know he was about to think very hard.

Before he could say a word, I said, “No lame fairy stories, Tad.”

He replied, primly, as a professor would an ill-prepared student. “We must recognize that Tomahawk is at stake. Only my best will do.” He looked confidently down at me. I am nearly a head shorter than him, but I am catching up. “I know! Some Nazi storm troopers grabbed you. They made you polish their boots. That’s why your hands are so dirty.”

Then, before I had time to even consider the storm trooper story, he said, “No. No. We were walking to Klosterneuburg to visit my mother’s cousin, you know, the baker at the monastery. That is a long, long hike! Crazy in December! Why? To get some extra flour. What did we do with it? I took it home. No, that won’t do . . . I have it . . . We were forced to use it to bribe a policeman who recognized you were Jewish and hassled you. Agreed, Hugi?”

“Are you crazy! No never! My parents will go berserk! They will never let me out of the apartment again for fear I will do some crazy stunt and not even end with the flour. Come on. Think! We have to have a good story before I get home or that is the end of the Tomahawk.”

The soft ping of the dripping communal faucet was the only sound in the hall. I stood in the narrow landing outside the apartment and stared at the cracked tile floor, trying to build up courage to open the door. This place had depressed me lately. Age and neglect gaped at me from every tile. The dim yellow light of the hallway made me feel sick and poor, and I had a constant fear the caretaker’s wife would emerge from her apartment and yell things like, “Jewish swine. I can’t wait until they come and take you all away . . . filthy beasts.” Standing outside the door, I took a deep breath and finally made up my mind. I would tell them I had heard they were giving out waiting numbers for visa applications at the Liberian consulate they were issuing next week....