Free A Perfect Madness by Frank H. Marsh

turned away, leaving
the police captain to wrestle with his own courage in the face of
Franz’s warning.
    After a twenty-minute walk that
carried him through the Old Town square and across the Charles
Bridge to Mala Strana, he entered a small coffeehouse sitting at
the edge of the Vltava River and made his way to an empty table.
The coffeehouse was number two on the list of his and Julia’s
favorite places, because at nighttime they could stroll unseen to a
host of hidden places along the banks of the great river to talk
and make love. Many times they would simply lie for hours entwined
in each other’s arms listening to the gurgling waters passing
nearby, or to the soft voices of other young lovers seeking their
own Eden among the heavy shrubs and foliage growing at the edge of
the river. Other times they would talk, always pretending, about
their future life together, children and doctoring and maybe
leaving Prague, but never about what they knew was sure to
come.
    Erich sipped the strong black coffee
and wished he had a cigarette to help calm the angst squeezing his
body and mind with its paralyzing fingers. Surely as he stood there
looking at the police captain and Franz, he knew Franz was right.
The Sudeten Germans would be yanked free from the Czechs at Munich
in a matter of days, and Prague would soon follow in a few
months.
    Erich sighed audibly. It seemed no
one, not himself, nor even the great powers, had the stomach to
defend anymore what was good. Duty to the state had become
paramount to truth, when it should be the other way around. He was
witnessing the wrenching birth of a monster that would kill its
mother. Prague would soon be dead.
    Erich studied his empty coffee cup
like a seer reading tea leaves, hoping to find an answer to the
promise that history had in store for him. For the first time in
his life he felt frightened over his very own existence, not just
Julia’s and her family’s. He decided that he must go to Julia and
persuade her to leave with him now, as they had talked about, and
if not with him, with her father and family. They could travel
south with other Jewish refugees making their way to Palestine, or
to Lisbon, or the Netherlands.
    But he had nothing, only the meager
allowance his father was still willing to provide each month, even
though they had not spoken from the day his father’s terrifying
position on treatment of the Jews became known. Erich sighed again,
only louder, causing patrons at a nearby table to glance his way.
He knew the Health Ministry would soon begin calling in all the
young German doctors for service, too, and his name would be on the
list when he graduated. For now, there really was no clear way open
for him to escape what history had promised him.
    Fifteen minutes after leaving the
café, Erich knocked on Julia’s front door. As soon as she opened
the door, he could tell she had been crying, because crying to her
was a constant distant thing, never to be expected from the way she
grabbed and took hold of life every conscious second of the day.
There wasn’t a moment of living that she regretted. “They were
given moments,” she would say, “and that makes them holy.” So Erich
was puzzled by the watery sadness in her eyes. Hearing his familiar
knock, Julia had rushed to wipe away the outpouring of tears
brought on by the humiliation her father had faced earlier in the
afternoon while seeking the company of his colleagues at the
University café.
    Dr. Kaufmann was sitting alone in his
study, facing the small front window, watching the last light of
the day grow gray. It was always a special time of day to inhale
what God has given us, he would tell Julia and her brother Hiram.
And together the three would watch the evening shadows grow bold
with descending shades of darkness and shapes until there was only
blackness. For Julia and Hiram, though, it was not the glory of God
that filled their eyes with wonder, but the tugging on the
imagination as they