by Richard Wake
Besides Stern, at the table tonight were Rand from Chicago, Hillary from Philadelphia, and Watson from the Manchester Guardian. I never asked for the first names. Watson was the guy they seemed to respect the most. You could tell because they all listened to him when he talked, rather than just showing off for each other with some worthless nugget they say they heard from Schuschnigg's cook's husband in a cafe in Floridsdorf. As if any of them would set foot in Floridsdorf.
Heading to and from the lavatory, they would pass our table and offer Leon a nod or a wave. When it was her turn to parade by, the woman from Chicago leaned in and whispered something in his ear, and he seemed on the verge of blushing. This was borderline historic because Leon didn't blush.
"Was that as dirty as it looked?"
Then Leon did blush, a little. "She said, and I quote, 'What wouldn't I give right now for a brief encounter with a man of the circumcised persuasion. If you can think of anybody, let me know."
"Jesus, she's pushing 50."
"Jesus has nothing to do with it."
"You mean you're thinking about it?"
"A source is a source. And the night is young."
Behind Leon, Vivian Montreaux and her husband, the French ambassador to Rome, walked in and were escorted to a booth on the other side of the cafe. She was unmistakable, even with her back to us, even from 50 feet away, because of her long, red hair. She never saw Leon, and neither did her husband. This was all probably for the best.
"What are they doing back in town?
Leon, his mouth full, answered anyway. "Not sure. But the French chef-de-mission dropped dead the other day. He's been here forever, and the funeral's tomorrow."
"You seen her since?"
"First time."
Until about two years ago, Leon worked for Der Abend. In a city with 22 newspapers, from serious to scandal sheet, Der Abend leaned rather heavily toward the latter. They had an editor there named Jurgen R. Jager, and Leon used to tell stories about him that had me pissing myself. Like this: Jager had a rule that every photo that accompanied every story about a car accident had one requirement: a young woman with big breasts standing there and solemnly surveying the wreckage. One photographer, Dieter, had a sister who qualified and was always on call, in case he couldn't round up somebody appropriate from the immediate neighborhood. When he used his sister for the third time in three months, Jager caught him. "Dieter, from now on, fresh tits," he bellowed, but then he giggled, "Although I have to admit that I will miss what has been on offer."
Then there was the time that Jager insisted on calling a murder victim an "Innere Stadt matron" even though she didn't live anywhere near the tony mansions of Innere Stadt. One of the reporters even pulled out a map and showed him. "It isn't close, boss."
Jager thundered, "It's close enough." And then he walked away, giggling. And, yes, he got his "Innere Stadt matron" headline."
This is the stuff Leon did, and he did it well. But he always wanted more -- politics instead of society fluff, a serious paper, a nod from the Manchester Guardian at Cafe Louvre. And Mme. Montreaux was how he got it.
It was simple enough, really. Working the society beat one night -- Der Abend was equal parts breasts, sports and boldfaced names of the wealthy and privileged -- Leon was leaning against one of the bars at a charity function of some sort in the Palais Auersperg. He ended up chatting with a young guy who was also hugging the bar, as bored as Leon was. It turns out his name was Herman Lutz, and he was the nephew of the German ambassador. He was 24, learning the diplomatic business -- shuffling meaningless paper during the day, drinking free drinks after work at the stultifying reception du jour, the usual stuff. It was nothing -- one drink, 10 or 15 minutes, a couple of stories, trading experiences about favored dance clubs, with Leon currently preferring Koenigen and Herr Lutz enjoying Mariposa. That was it. Leon wrote 400 words, including 28 names, and his work was done.
Until two weeks later, on a lazy Thursday afternoon, when the entire diplomatic corps was in the parliament listening to Schuschnigg prattle on about something or other and then cabling their advice to their governments. Leon just happened to be about 300 feet from the French ambassador's residence, when the door opened, and none other than Herr Lutz walked out, stopped, leaned back in and embraced a woman whose face he could not see but who had a head of splendidly long red hair.
With that, the rest of it worked pretty simply. First Leon confronted Lutz at Mariposa. He thought the kid, who was a little bit drunk and who had a tiny brunette waiting for him at a small table, was going to cry. The next morning, he confronted the good mademoiselle at Demel, her regular cafe. She did cry. The deal was pretty plain. Leon didn't want state secrets, but he wanted political gossip from both of them, or else. Herr Lutz's services lasted three months until he left town and abandoned the idea of a career in the diplomatic service, returning to Heidelberg to obtain an advanced degree in biology. Mme. Montreaux lasted six months before she managed to get her husband transferred to Rome. But in that time, Leon broke a ton of political news and developed a variety of new sources -- because that's how it works: when you start to know stuff, all kinds of people become attracted to you and begin to whisper into your ear. That success enabled him to get a job writing politics at Die Neue Freie Presse, which was probably No. 1 in seriousness.
Leon was good, and the other journalists all knew it, and these nights at Cafe Louvre were now ventures into a world that Leon used to covet, but in which he now clearly belonged.
He just surveyed the place as we got another drink after dinner. And then he hit me.
"So, are you going to do it?"
"Do what? I'm not circumcised."
"Are you going to spy or not?"
I had not told anyone, not Johanna, not Henry, no one. I could barely admit it to myself. I generally did about 75 percent of my yearly drinking in the 33 percent of the year I spent on the road, but I had been drinking every night since the meeting in Stephansdom. I was honestly frightened and just didn't know what to do.
When I asked him how he knew, Leon said, "I'm insulted you'd ask. I mean, I do this for a living. And they should never have used that chinless weasel from Prague to approach you -- and to do it twice. He was embarrassingly easy to crack. As soon as I saw him approach you the second time, I knew it would be a cinch. So you are going to do it?"
"First off, fuck you. You didn't tell anybody, did you?"
"Our secret."
"Then I'll tell you the truth: I don't know what to do."
"You know what the right thing to do is, though. And that's all that matters."
"I don't know what's right."
"Yes, you do."
"It's more complicated than you think."
"Why, is daddy going to be mad?"
"I repeat: fuck you."
"So what do they want you to do?"
I explained what the guy in Stephansdom said. We talked a little about the risk. He pushed. I pushed back.
"If they asked me, I would do it without thinking," he said.
"I have a lot more to lose than you do."
He got quiet. I got quiet. We drank some more. I left. The woman from Chicago was still at the correspondents' table in the corner.
11
I had been to the restaurant in the Hotel Weinzinger in Linz a half-dozen times. The food was okay but only okay. The decor, dark and formal. The waiters, old and decrepit. Nothing about the place was memorable, but I did enjoy the walk down to the Danube, which the hotel overlooked. Of course, this would be my last visit. I wasn't going back to a place where I got fired.
I was playing it out in my head during the train ride, how it was going to happen. I was about 98 percent sure, partly because of the botched order, partly because I could no longer hide my disgust from Herr Ulrich Bain.
Don't get me wrong -- I kissed plenty of Nazi ass in the course of doing business. I would do the salute when I was in Germany and got cornered into it, mainly when there were military peop
le in the room. Of course, I always made it quick and weak, convincing myself that it wasn't the same as the heel-clicking, stiff-armed assholes. I drew the line at laughing at Jewish jokes -- I perfected a kind of eye roll/change the subject combination that got me out of those situations every time. I also would go out of my way to avoid the public displays of Nazi affection that seemed to pop up all the time; you couldn't take a walk after lunch in Munich without running into a parade where, if you didn't salute, you got slugged by a brownshirt, or worse. I always managed to duck into a shop or an alley to avoid those things. But business was, well, business.
Except for Herr Ulrich Bain. He was worse than the Germans. A lot of people in Linz were. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, but he spent some of his youth in Linz, and the citizens seemed to be quite proud of their favorite son. I was actually in a bar once with a client where one guy said Hitler once slept in his house, another guy said Hitler once kissed his aunt when they were kids, and the owner of the bar said that Hitler used his bathroom. So proud, they were.
Anyway, the last time I was in Herr Bain's office, he was complaining about the messed up delivery, and accepting a discount on the next delivery but refusing to be placated, refusing to let it go. He was over at the sideboard, fixing us a drink and preparing to complain some more. I was fine enough with that. It was the job, after all. But then he did what he always did. He picked up the photo he had on the sideboard -- which was in a much more expensive frame than the picture of his wife on the desk -- and sat down with it in his lap. Then he looked down at it, and then he looked at me, and then he pointed at the photo and said, "The day will come, and it will come soon, when Austria knows the greatness of his leadership --"
I had heard the speech about six times before. It never varied. So this time I interrupted, picking up the speech in mid-sentence, even adopting Bain's pinched accent. "-- and the genius of his vision, and the purity of the Aryan race."
Bain was stunned, his mouth opened, then closed, then his whole face twisted in a fury. You could disagree with a Nazi -- they even kind of enjoyed the argument sometimes -- but you could never mock them. Suffice it to say, I drank up. I'm not sure either of us said anything after I shrugged and said, "Well, it is a memorable sentiment."
So now he was going to fire us. Lunch was set for noon. There was a particular protocol to this sort of thing. You ordered a drink and talked about the weather. You ordered the meal and talked about your families. You spent the better part of an hour avoiding the obvious subject until the waiter brought the coffee. It was an agonizing dance, especially when you knew all along that you were going to be on the receiving end of the bad news, but it's what you did. He wanted to make this as civil as possible in case he ever needed us again. We wanted the same thing, just in case. Business is business, after all, and that was the ritual.
Walking the several blocks to the Weinzinger, I was determined just to shut my mouth and endure the lunch. Then I got about a block away and witnessed Bain, across the street and with his back to me, screaming at an older man in a white apron standing outside of Goldberg's Delicatessen. Goldberg, probably. Another man was yelling, too. A policeman watched from about 50 feet away.
All I could hear was garbled anger, except for the "fucking kike" that shot clearly out of Bain's mouth as he turned halfway toward me. More yelling followed. Goldberg raised the broom he was holding and menaced it in Bain's direction. The policeman bellowed, "Goldberg!" and that was enough for the old man to holster his weapon. He turned and went back into the deli. Bain and the other man laughed, shook hands, gave each other the Hitler salute and walked away in different directions, another job well done by the master race.
It is difficult to describe what I felt as I watched -- anger, sorrow, helplessness, inevitability. It is hard to love such a shitty country, but I did, even if it was my adopted home. And I couldn't stand the idea of Hitler officially sanctioning every lousy impulse in the Austrian character, and making life impossible for people like Leon and Hannah.
At that moment, the only thing keeping the Germans on the other side of the border was Mussolini, who would likely object to Hitler swallowing us whole when he was still hoping to take a nibble out of us himself. But who knew how long that would last? The Duce could get distracted, or bought off by Hitler, or who knows -- at which point, Austria would become a delicious lunch. Our army wouldn't last 24 hours against Germany's, if for no other reason than the fact that they wouldn't have the nerve to shoot all of their cheering brothers and cousins waving the Nazi flag.
So what were you supposed to do? I could ask a hundred people not to tell me any Jewish jokes, and it wouldn't matter. Leon could get in a street fight every night of the week if he wanted and it wouldn't matter. Hitler was too big for any of us to stop -- and he was coming, and everybody knew it. We just didn't know when. A country might have been able to stop him. An individual, though? Leon talked all the time about "the human imperative to resist." But all it got you was brained by a paving stone and a half-dozen stitches, and that's if you were lucky.
Anyway, Bain went into the hotel. I waited two or three minutes and then followed him in. He checked his coat and hat. I decided not to check mine at the last second, brushing past the man at the reservation stand and approaching his table.
"Herr Kovacs."
"Herr Bain. You're here to fire my company, am I right?"
He was taken aback. This isn't how it was supposed to work. "Well, yes I am."
"Thank you. And go fuck yourself."
I turned and walked out, not waiting to see or hear his reaction. I was elated as I reached the sidewalk -- it always feels good to tell somebody to go fuck themselves, especially when the retort isn't in the form of a balled fist.
My next appointment wasn't for 2 1/2 hours, and I realized I had just missed lunch. I got a sandwich at Goldberg's.
12
The little local train from the Linz station got me to Mauthausen in about 20 minutes. Rather than taking a taxi to the quarry, I decided to walk. It was about two miles, but it was a nice day. The path wended through clusters of small homes built into the hillsides and on ridges that overlooked great valleys. The quarry was pretty far away, up in the distance, ruggedly imposing.
How my father knew Edgar Grundman, the owner of the quarry, was a mystery to me. The old man never traveled anywhere. Maybe Grundman had been to Brno at some point, I didn't know. All I knew for sure was that the Kovacs family had no intention of getting into the granite business.
"Who would we get to run it -- you?" the old man said on the phone, laughing. It might have been the only time I had heard him laugh in a year.
"So why do I have to listen to him?"
"Just be polite when you turn him down."
"But this is a waste of time."
"You have plenty of time. Just do it."
I was slightly winded as I reached the quarry. Herr Grundman was waiting for me at the door.
"I was watching you. That's a good walk in city shoes."
I looked down at my brogues, shined every week, now covered in gray dust. "City shoes? Country shoes? What's the difference."
"The blisters on your feet when you take them off tonight will be explanation enough. You know, there is a world outside the Vienna city limits. You probably think a big nature adventure is a trip to get drunk in Grinzing."
He was right, but so what? Outside of Vienna was a world full of Hitler-loving anti-Semites.
"This is a pretty area," I said. "The quarry has a rough beauty that is hard to imagine if you haven't seen it."
The office was a working foreman's office, not an owner's office. Work schedules and delivery notices were posted on the wall, along with an Ottakringer beer calendar that featured two attractive swimsuits. A broken piece of some bit of machinery was disassembled on a side table awaiting a reworking of the mechanical jigsaw puzzle.
"You still get your hands dirty every day?"
"Not really. I supervise, most
ly. But I like the work. I like being in the middle of it."
This isn't how my father ran the mine. He only showed his face outside the office to yell at people. My father wore city shoes always.
"So if you still enjoy it, why are you selling? And how do you know my father?"
"That's two different questions. I'll start with the second one. I have never met your father in person. I did know your mother."
Mama got the Spanish flu and died in 1918. It was God's last, worst joke. The war that was supposed to last six months lasted more than four years. And near the end, just when everybody thought it was going to be safe again, the flu epidemic wiped out millions more. They buried her before I was discharged. I didn't even get a photo of her.
"We met at a Fasching ball in Vienna in 1894. I was 19. She was 17. If I close my eyes, I can still see the dress she was wearing -- pink, very light pink, with a ruffle at the hem. To say I was smitten doesn't begin to explain it -- well, maybe it does. She was in town for two weeks, and we saw each other every day -- balls, the opera, coffees. I know it was quick, but we were both very much in love."
You never think of your parents that way, not when you are a kid, not even when you are grown. I knew her family was some kind of minor Czech nobility, and that they didn't entirely approve when she married the grubby mine owner's son, but they didn't cut her off completely. I knew my grandparents in the big house in Dukovany, on the banks of the Jihlava, with the fields and forest surrounding it. I learned to shoot a rifle there. I got my first kiss there, from the housekeeper's daughter.
"So why didn't you get together? Was it my father?"
"No, he wasn't in the picture then. The problem is that your mother was Catholic and I am Lutheran. It was impossible."
