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him so joyously arrogant as he was at
this moment. What seemed to impress his father most, though, was
the rapid enactment of laws throughout America providing for
compulsory sterilization of the criminally insane and other people
considered genetically inferior.
    “ America, that bulwark of
liberty, is leading the world in preserving the human race, and
Germany must seize the lead in cleansing the Aryan race,” he would
repeat over and over to Erich, like a broken record, as they left
the conference for home. What was to follow would bring Erich to
Prague and to Julia.
    The second morning at sea Dr. Schmidt
suddenly began humming Fitzgerald’s popular song. “We must find and
buy a copy of that song,” he said, stopping the incessant humming
for a second.
    “ It is only a catchy song,
nothing more,” Erich replied, disgusted and embarrassed by his
father’s childish actions.
    “ No, it sings out loud
what the American people are really thinking. They’re afraid that
the advanced races of mankind are skating backwards, sliding down a
slippery slope to be swallowed up one day by ignorance. We must
sing the same song to those who will listen.”
    Erich shook his head. Never before had
such unbridled giddiness pushed out from his father’s strict
bearing. He seemed almost human. It was as if he had been suddenly
swept up in the “rapture.”
    “ We too must become part
of this sacred mission,” his father continued babbling.
    “ What are you talking
about? What mission?”
    “ To save the great Aryan
race from extinction. What else? We will embrace the National
Socialist movement like Lenz, who is committed to such a
mission.”
    Erich rose from his deck chair and
walked to the railing, joining several other passengers looking at
the angry ocean surrounding them. The beckoning waters had been
there an eternity, he knew, churning and rolling and giving birth
to all life. They would still be there long after Germany and the
Aryan race had been erased by God and returned to dust.
    Looking back at his father, Erich saw
nothing, only the tradition he hated. He had no desire to follow in
the footsteps of his father. Healing and touching sick bodies was
distasteful to him. Instead, it was the sick mind that roiled and
captured his interest. The growing field of psychiatry would bring
him the fame he had long imagined, and possibly a distinguished
professorship in a few years alongside the great German
psychiatrists at Berlin University and Munich, or even the German
University in Prague, where the great intellectual movement in
Prague had first reached out to him. Kafka and the other great
writers of the Prague Circle were there alongside the city’s
artists and men of letters. Philosophy and the metaphysical
presence of being were open for the world to see and study. What he
had to do was leave his studies at Berlin University to go
there.
    Having looked at the rising and
falling horizon too long, Erich felt nauseated and returned to the
chair next to his father to rest.
    “ You have turned green,”
his father said, amused. “A bouncing horizon is not something to
favor too long.”
    “ Let me rest my head a few
minutes and we will talk some more.”
    After a few minutes, Erich turned to
his father and picked up the disturbing conversation
again.
    “ Father, you cannot join
the National Socialist movement. It is political; you are a doctor,
a physician, a defender of the Hippocratic Oath—not a
politician.”
    “ You are so pitifully
young and wrong, Erich. Hereditary health is before us now, tugging
at us. It’s not something we must wait for. You saw with your own
eyes what is taking place in America. They are leading the way, but
soon they will follow Germany.”
    “ And do what?”
    “ Sterilize all of the
unfit, not just a few, and even develop a racial policy. The black
man has no standing there.”
    “ And Germany?”
    “ My boy, listen:
biological laws are the laws of life and National Socialism