Parable of the Nazi Kommandant's Wife

*

So the 3 of them in a restaurant, Elise, Scott, Mary Louise, sat discussing the parable of the Nazi Kommandant's wife. Have you heard it?

She was born a Christian, raised a Christian and, sometime soon after her all but compulsory marriage -- imposed without appeal by a dominating father -- she suffered a Christian conversion. From Christianity to deeper Christianity, and it almost killed her. For weeks she didn't eat. She lost her first child. Her husband's patience vaporized. Hours praying and talking to herself. Growing weaker and stronger at the same time. When the war got underway her husband was assigned to run a certain camp.

Did she know about the camp? Her mystical tendencies were like a fog obscuring certain realities. She had never in her life met a Jew, that she knew of. She had no interest in German patriotism, in politics at well. The faces on the coins she never cared to look at.

Vigils, fasts, she became one of those Christians that cannot hide their faith even when they don't evangelize.

A child came who loved her. She protected the young one from its father. Without a word of criticism. Without ever a word.

*

And there was smoke from the building at the other side of town, where one didn't go or couldn't go. And she never asked her husband anything about his work.

In some ways she was what I'd like to be, Mary Louise said. Scott stared at her, not sure if she was joking or if this was one of those things women said and only women understood.

*

There was smoke, Elise said. What do you suppose was burning, Mary Louise?

What? Are you saying it was one of *those* camps?

*

Well like most parables this one wandered slightly off the track of ordinary realism. There was a day when some sort of explosion occurred or a bomb fell -- or God's thunder from heaven -- and a fair number of civilians fell down without rising afterwards. The Kommandant's wife was one of them.

When she found herself tangentially grazing the beautiful soft sphere of heaven, soft and comfy as a giant fitball, she couldn't help smiling. I have wanted to be here for a long time.

The problem was that it was people that entered heaven -- that is, people, not individuals but entities with culture and a worship that bound them together. You didn't get in as a celebrity or as a localized believer.

So the guardians asked her not just about herself but about the place she'd occupied and changed or failed to change. I am not a Nazi, she said, I barely even know who they are.

*

Was this answer good enough? We can't answer, Elise said. Not only because we don't happen to have the answer but also because we don't have the right -- I mean, even to speculate from outside.

How many African babies do you suppose have starved to death since the time we sat down to this dinner?

*