Dreams Bigger Than the Night

by Levitt, Paul M.

  “It’s a living . . . for everyone in the family.”

  The gossip pages had often noted that Jean supported her parents and that her father had an insatiable appetite for luxury.

  “Do you have any favorite actresses?” he asked.

  “Yeah, Mary Astor. She’s a peach.”

  Studying her hand, she grimaced and rearranged her cards.

  “I can understand the rabbi, but why the priests?”

  “Longie’s tutors.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, they befriended him when he gave a few bucks to some Catholic charity. They suggest books he should read and talk to him about philosophy.”

  “You gotta be kidding!”

  She put her hand down and gave him a soulful look. “What’s wrong with a guy improvin’ himself? If you wanna get ahead, Jay . . .”

  Her unfinished sentence struck him less than the fact she had used his first name. He measured their difference in age: three years. “I’m trying. To tell you the truth, I promised myself that in the next few years I’d read all of Dickens.”

  “Hey, don’t go overboard. You gotta leave time for other things.”

  “Like?”

  Without replying, she tossed away one card, took another, and spread her hand on the table. “A straight flush: ace, two, three, four, five.”

  He tossed his cards on the table in a gesture of defeat.

  “What’s my winnings?”

  “I thought it was just a friendly game.”

  “Jean takes her poker seriously.”

  “All right,” Jay said, throwing up his arms, feigning a mock surrender. “Name your price.”

  “You take me to dinner in Hollywood.”

  “And if I don’t get out there?”

  “Miss Harlow’s astrologer predicted a young man would come west and dine with her.” She paused, appearing abstracted, as if she were actually giving credence to the forecast of some stargazer. “If you ain’t got the dough, Jean will pay. Then after dinner we can go to her place and play poker.”

  “Tell me, Jean . . .” he hazarded her first name and she didn’t object, “who do you play with at home?”

  “You’re the reporter. Why don’t ya come to Hollywood and find out for yourself?”

  On their drive back to Newark, while Puddy kept up a running commentary on the evening’s events, Jay’s thoughts were elsewhere. As an English major in college, he had become interested in dialects. This evening he had heard English conveyed in unfamiliar accents and tones. The words and idioms brought to mind a conversation with a linguistics professor. Jay had observed that on entering college he spoke one way, and was now leaving speaking another.

  “I’ve gone from street slang to academic diction.”

  His professor had replied, “Look at it this way, you are now bilingual, which will enable you to fit right in. With your neighborhood friends, you can speak in jargon, and in polite circles, you can use the King’s English. Call it protective coloration or adaptation. It’s all very Darwinian.”

  2

  Magda Hahne had nearly died in childbirth. Her one child, Rolf, had earned the enmity of his father because Magda could no longer conceive. Rolf, born in 1886, was the darling of his mother. She not only doted on him but also kept him safe from his father’s wrath. As a youngster, Rolf excelled in school, proving himself adept at languages; he was also a gifted singer. Erik Hahne, barely literate, hated his son all the more for his achievements—and for his fear of dogs. Although an immigrant by choice, the father loved all things German and had come to despise the freewheeling life in America. Ignoring the pleas of his wife and son, he moved his family from Philadelphia to Umfel, Germany, his place of birth. On Rolf’s tenth birthday, his father took him mushroom picking in the woods near the village. A German shepherd came bounding through the woods, his master out of sight. The dog, sensing Rolf’s unease, growled at the boy, who retreated and cowered. Erik Hahne drove off the dog, removed his belt, and beat his son into unconsciousness. His explanation to Magda was that the boy had been cowardly. Magda moved out of the house and into another, taking Rolf with her. To keep Erik from being arrested, she never reported the crime. Rolf’s back had been savagely striped and his left ear mangled. When he recovered, he barely spoke, and his father, having taken seriously to drink, rarely saw his wife and son again.

  At the start of World War I, Rolf enlisted. He trained with a purpose and hardened his body into a killing machine. By the end of the war, he had acquitted himself bravely and, miraculously, escaped injury. When his mother asked him had he killed any enemy soldiers, he replied, “I did what I was ordered to do.” Having no taste for village life, he remained in the army and, with his superior’s recommendation, applied to the SS Intelligence Service, where he was interviewed by Ernst Eicke, whose first question was:

  “Is there anything good that can be said about Jews?”

  Misunderstanding, Rolf replied, “A Jewish doctor in Philadelphia delivered me and saved my mother’s life.”

  Eicke flew into a fury. “Do you want to work for the SS or not? The Jews are vermin! If not for your knowledge of America and English, I would send you to a camp for reeducation.”

  Rolf Hahne apologized for his weakness and swore to uphold SS standards. Eicke, not entirely sure of this new man, assigned him to kill a “hymie.”

  “If he’s an intellectual, all the better.”

  “The means?”

  “Use your imagination and report back here when it’s done.” Making his way to a local medical center that employed Jewish doctors, Rolf waited in the lobby for one of the physicians to exit. But each time a chance presented itself, his resolve weakened and his hands trembled. To one side of the lobby stood a pharmacy. A young boy, perhaps five or six, clung to his mother filling a prescription for a pain killer. The boy had just come from a dentist’s office. He was complaining about his jaw hurting. Reflexively, Rolf approached one of the pharmacists, a pretty young woman, and asked to buy a dentist’s pick.

  “A pick or a scaler? They’re different, you know. The first removes stains and the second dislodges food.”

  “Pick.”

  “They come in sets of four and twelve.”

  “Four.”

  “We have stainless steel picks with nonslip grooved shafts. They’re the best.”

  “I’ll take them.”

  She wrapped up the package, and Rolf left. On the street, he slipped one of the picks up his sleeve and pocketed the other three. He then made his way to a small neighborhood synagogue that he had often passed. It seemed as though every lamppost was flying a Nazi flag, and some stores had painted on the glass front the word “Juden.” The synagogue, perched between a bakery and a fish store, serviced a poor Jewish area of Berlin. The doors to both shops were open, and the customers’ voices carried into the street. Women in shawls were buying rolls and challahs. An older woman was haggling with the fish merchant over the price of a river trout. The mingled scents of fresh bread and herring followed Rolf into the shul. Unlike the churches of his youth, this building smelled of prayer and parchment. He knew enough to take a yarmulke from a basket at the front door. The rabbi, a slight, sad-faced man, no doubt made sadder by recent events, was addressing a congregation of three, all silver-haired elderly men. Rolf seated himself at the back of the small sanctuary and rocked in unison with the others. Waiting until the other congregants had left, Rolf asked the rabbi if he could have a word with him in private.

  The rabbi gestured toward a side door. “Please . . . in my office.”

  Rolf feared that a secretary might be present, but to his relief the room, with its battered rolltop desk and swivel chair, was empty. On one wall, a large white oval ceramic displayed in black lettering the Ten Commandments. The rabbi removed his tallith, folded it neatly, and turned his back to store it in a
small wooden chest. Rolf took that moment to noiselessly come up behind the rabbi and drive the pick into the side of his neck. As the rabbi lay gasping, Rolf removed the tallith and placed it over the dying man’s face and suffocated him. Leaving the pick in the rabbi’s neck, Rolf slowly strolled to a streetcar and found his way back to his barracks.

  The next morning, he reported to Ernst Eicke on his previous day’s work. “I suspect it will make all the papers.”

  Eicke sneered. “A fifth of them are owned by the swine.”

  Indeed, the Berliner Morgenpost, a Jewish-owned newspaper, reported the story in headlines, and the writer emphasized the cruelty of the crime and the barbarism of leaving the dental pick lodged in the rabbi’s neck.

  The SS authorities, pleased by Rolf’s cold-bloodedness, took Ernst Eicke’s advice and assigned Rolf to work with Hans von Tschammer und Osten, the leader of the Reich Sports Office, which was planning, with the SS, to assassinate a few key U.S. figures who supported boycotting the Berlin Olympics. Although Rabbi Stephen S. Wise was high on their list, as were Jeremiah Mahoney and Ernest Lee Jahncke (one of only three U.S. members of the International Olympic Committee), these men were unassailable; a second list had the names of “traitors” who could hurt the German-American cause. Among them appeared the names of Americans sympathetic to the boycott, as well as Abner Zwillman and Arietta Ewerhardt.

  “I can understand the first list,” said Rolf, “but where does the second come from?”

  “Wiretaps. One of our agents works in the New Jersey telephone exchange and has been keeping tabs on Fräulein Ewerhardt.”

  Rolf Hahne was taking coffee with Hans von Tschammer in the latter’s office and reviewing his orders, which included passing for von Halt’s aide-de-camp and joining the German delegation that would meet Avery Brundage, the head of the American Olympic Committee, in Sweden, and that would then return with him to Berlin.

  “I see from your notes,” said Rolf, “that in 1930 Brundage initially opposed the choice of Berlin for the 1936 Olympics. He wanted Barcelona.”

  Hans’s smile bore a disconcerting resemblance to the one exhibited by Hitler, whose portrait looked down imperiously from the wall. “It took some doing. At the time, Rome and Barcelona were in the running. But that buffoon Mussolini ruined Rome’s chances. Fortunately, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) met in Barcelona to decide. I say fortunately because by April 1931, Spain was descending into chaos. Some of the delegates couldn’t even make it to the meeting. So the IOC decided on Berlin, which they praised for its orderliness. And that,” he said proudly, “was even before the Führer came to power and imposed real discipline.”

  “I will study the notes on Brundage before we leave for Stockholm. One can never be too prepared.”

  On first meeting, Hans von Tschammer had liked the young man. Rolf had blond hair and blue eyes, the embodiment of Nazi youth; he stood over six feet, mostly muscle. Except for the scars on his back, which raised a few eyebrows, he exhibited flawless Aryan skin. At the suggestion of von Tschammer, Rolf had had his back tattooed with an Iron Cross, which effectively disguised his welts.

  Hans replied, “It is the wise man who prepares in advance. Now I want you to meet Karl Ritter von Halt, who will be in charge of the meetings with Brundage. Like you, he speaks perfect English.”

  Avery Brundage set sail for Europe on July 29, 1934. Given his wealth and his stature, he traveled first class. Even the few famous people sailing on the same ship paid due deference to this man who felt himself charged with the responsibility of seeing that the Berlin Olympics took place, and that its detractors, whom Avery regarded as principally Communists and Jews, would not prevail. He ate at the captain’s table, danced with socialites in the ballroom, took the air on deck with his wife, Elizabeth Dunlop Brundage, and swam two miles every morning in the ship’s pool. A former decathlon athlete, he prided himself on being trim, forceful, and honest. His critics would have agreed with the first two qualities, and would have snickered at the third.

  A skirt chaser, he eyed all the pretty women on board, accompanied one to her stateroom, poured her champagne, and then turned out the lights. He felt that most of the passengers were not his equals. Having risen from poverty to wealth, he had little patience for the out-of-work and those on the Roosevelt dole, as he called it. He often said that with self-discipline and hard work virtually anyone could succeed. His was a Calvinist work ethic joined to a roué’s morality. In his late forties, he regarded himself as a self-made man, having overcome a broken home and poor eyesight to earn a college degree in civil engineering and start his own construction business. He regretted only two things: the day that he learned his myopia would require him always to wear glasses (he was ten), and the day, in the 1912 Olympics, that he quit the decathlon before the last event, the fifteen-hundred-meter race. He was exhausted, having already competed in the pentathlon, but others, he later told himself, were equally tired and had finished the race. To excise the memory of having given up, he dedicated himself to remaining steadfast when opposed, lest he regard himself once again as a quitter. Now he and Elizabeth, a plain, retiring woman with impeccable manners, were sailing for Europe, where he would argue that sports and politics must live in separate realms.

  Dario Lorca, whose Castilian family dated back to the twelfth century, invited the Brundages to dine at his table. The ballroom was all chandeliers and waiters in stiff uniforms and a five-piece ensemble playing Viennese music and two professional dancers gliding across the glistening floor. Avery appeared in a white linen suit, sporting a boater banded in red, and Elizabeth in a light pink, long formal dress. Dario’s table, the most elegant, included Baroness Annuska Polanyi from Hungary, Count Stefan Galati from Rumania, and Francesca Bronzina, an Italian singer, all of whom had left the United States with a sense of foreboding, but for different reasons. Having seen the ravages of the Depression in America, they wondered out loud how Roosevelt could persuade his southern and conservative colleagues to take the steps necessary to end the chronic joblessness. The only person in the group who did not believe in collective action was Avery Brundage, who equated the New Deal with hated socialism, and said so, to the chagrin of his wife.

  Mrs. Brundage touched her husband’s arm and excused herself, complaining of seasickness. Avery wondered whether she was truly ill or just escaping from a discussion of politics.

  The baroness, dressed in a frilly gown, an outdated boa, and with feathers in her hair, felt certain that it would be better for her to move her mother and two brothers to France than to wait until the feckless Hungarian government settled the disputes between Russophiles and Ukrainophiles and became autonomous from Czechoslovakia. “The country is paralyzed and ripe for a dictator. Then what’ll happen?”

  Brundage replied, “Look at all the good that has come from Hitler in Germany. Maybe a strongman is the answer. America could do worse than electing a Hitler.”

  The baroness raised her plucked eyebrows, lifted her chin, and protested, “The man is a barbarian, a monster. He hates the upper classes and the intelligentsia, probably because he is a guttersnipe.”

  “Look at all the improvements that Mussolini has brought to Italy,” said Signorina Bronzina, who seemed to prefer a liquid diet of champagne to the main course. “I know people scoff at the idea that Il Duce has made the trains run on time, but the fact is that he has. And some of the train stations are architectural monuments.”

  Exuding nobility in his English-styled tuxedo, Dario mumbled, “The man’s a buffoon.”

  “Non sono d’accordo,” said Francesca rather proudly, arching her back and extending her ample bosom, which was at war with the stays of her corset and her elegant dark blue gown. She had won more than a few arguments by thrusting her chest into the fray.

  Dario Lorca, who spoke six languages fluently, including Italian, responded, “Il uomo é un pavone.”

  Brundage,
like most men of his midwestern class, spoke only English, equating multilingualism with spies. “He seems to have put the Communists where they belong: in jail.”

  “He was one himself before he became a nationalist,” Dario said.

  Avery’s expertise was business and sports, not history, and he felt out of his element. In his correspondence with the German Olympic Committee, he had made it clear that he would, at all times, need a German translator, one who understood colloquial American diction. He hazarded, “At least Mussolini saw the light. A great many people in America have yet to do so.”

  Count Stefan Galati, silent during the discussion, smoked one gold-tipped Turkish cigarette after another. Dario turned to him:

  “Count, you have recently been to both Italy and Germany. What is your impression?”

  Galati’s English was of the British variety, formal and terse. He blew a cloud of smoke through his nose and said, “Yes, like you I have been to both countries. I don’t suppose our opinions differ much on the matter of fascism. Italy is authoritarian and Germany totalitarian. Distinctions with a difference.”

  “Ah, then you agree with me,” said Francesca, running a hand through her long, blonde hair, “that Benito is not so bad.”

  “If he ever runs afoul of Hitler,” replied the count, “Italy will be doomed.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked the baroness, massaging her neck as if to dispel the wrinkles.

  “The Italians are laughter and food,” answered the count, “the Germans, mirthless and maniacal.”

  Reciting her words as if trilling up and down a scale, Francesca recounted singing in Vienna, Berlin, and the Rome opera house with both Mussolini and La Sarfatti present.

  “Who is Sarfatti?” asked Brundage.

  “Benito’s favorite mistress,” said Francesca.

  Brundage seemed uncomfortable. “I don’t approve.”

  Dario looked nonplussed. “Of what?”