Returning to the street, he gathered from the chattering Friends that Fritz Julius Kuhn, the “American Führer,” would be addressing the faithful. Having joined the Friends in 1933, Kuhn had risen rapidly from head of the Detroit local to leader of the midwestern units, and was now the major figure in the American Nazi movement.
At the front door of the Schwaben Halle, two young men, holding batons in their gloved hands and wearing swastikas, black jackets, brown shirts, and jackboots, checked membership cards. He weighed Arietta’s warning and decided to enter, but only long enough to see if he could spot Axel Kuppler. One of the myrmidons checked his card and stepped aside. Planning to slip out early, he stood in the back, a plausible choice since most of the seats were taken. As many women as men were in attendance, also a large number of teenagers. The stage held three empty chairs and a dais with a Nazi flag. Suddenly a drum roll, played by a uniformed young man, ushered in the notables, among them Axel Kuppler. The first man to speak introduced himself as the head of the Newark Friends. Quickly moving from English to German, the man elicited a great deal of hand clapping, though Jay couldn’t follow well enough to figure out why. Axel followed and said in his polished English that it was his great pleasure to introduce Fritz Julius Kuhn, “who is known to you all as one of our greatest German-American patriots.” Other than decrying “the efforts of Jews and their hirelings to boycott the Olympics,” Kuppler said nothing inflammatory, concluding by clicking his heels and saluting Kuhn, a gesture that brought the audience to its feet heiling.
Kuhn began his speech in German. The English part consisted of anti-Semitic attacks against prominent Jews, like New York Governor Herbert Lehman, and a diatribe against the Roosevelt administration for “its concentration of Jews in government.” Jay headed for the exit, Kuhn’s voice still fulminating. “I can assure you that 95 percent of Americans agree that we must attack the filthy Jews in every realm—politics, economics, and culture—and that the battle to destroy this detestable race will be very agreeable.”
The uniformed guards, standing at the doors in the back of the hall with their arms across their chests and their legs anchored, seemed in no mood to let him leave.
“Diarrhea,” he whispered, indicating his stomach, though he could just as well have pointed to the speaker.
The guards probably would have continued to block his way had a stench bomb and a rain of rocks not broken the rear windows, dispersing the crowd with glass shards and putrid smells. By the time he reached the street, dozens of Minutemen, armed with baseball bats, brass knuckles, chains, and clubs, had formed a phalanx in front of the hall. One of them would have brained him had not a familiar baritone yelled out:
“He works for us. Let him go.”
It was Puddy Hinkes, and next to him stood Nat Arno.
Jay started toward the two men, but Nat waved him off, saying, “Get outta here, kid, this ain’t any of your business.”
He lingered just long enough to see the ferocious beatings inflicted on the Friends: the hail of bricks, the screaming women, the blood, the downed men trying to crawl away or retreat into the hall for shelter. The enforcers picked out for particular pummeling those displaying armbands or other kinds of Nazi dress. Even from a distance, he could see heads laid open, men felled by blows to their knees and legs, jaws and faces struck violently; the men lay on the ground trying to fend off kicks to their backs. But nowhere in the crowd could he see Fritz Kuhn, who had presumably stayed behind to greet well-wishers and had escaped the carnage. The avengers, unfortunately, had no idea what Kuhn looked like. Animated by that idea, Jay darted into the alley just in time to see Kuhn and Kuppler enter the very building that he had broken into. Racing back to the street, he yelled that the Nazi leaders had gotten away and pointed out where they had taken refuge. But before Puddy and his friends could reach them, police sirens sounded and patrol cars came into view. He knew damn well why they had taken so long, and wondered how much it had cost Abe. Breaking up Nazi meetings had become a specialty of his, and the absence of police was his trademark.
Less than twenty-four hours later, Arietta called, said that she had to see him immediately, and recommended an ice cream parlor on Bergen Street. Facing each other in a booth, they leaned across the table talking and sipping black-and-white sodas.
“After I told you not to,” she said, “you went to the Friends meeting.”
“I even got a story out of it, though not a byline. The editor called it a scoop.”
“Why did you go?” she asked anxiously.
“To be perfectly honest, Arietta, I wanted to see what role Mr. Kuppler would play.”
“He recognized you.”
“I thought he might. I was standing in the back.”
“Do you have any idea how close you came to jeopardizing . . . that is, getting yourself killed?”
“Is that what Axel said?”
“He certainly wanted to know if your presence had anything to do with the . . . aftermath.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“No.”
Jay sipped on his straw, thinking of what to say next. “Arietta, what do you know that I don’t?”
“Have you any idea how ruthless these people are, how demonic? Even if I didn’t care for you as I do, I would try to keep you away from these people and their deceits. See no evil . . .”
“I appreciate your concern, but frankly, I’d rather be in the know.”
She turned her magnificent eyes away from him, and her face took on an expression of great sadness. “That man, Axel . . . I met him in Parsippany at a picnic for young German-Americans. The Friends were trying to bring together eligible young people. I enrolled. It was my way, foolish as it turned out, to honor my mother’s memory. I even assumed her maiden name, Ewerhardt, when I attended. Axel and I dated—his aristocratic manners and expensive clothes impressed me—but it didn’t work out. He still calls me Fräulein Ewerhardt.”
“And now he thinks I’m a member of the mob that attacked the Friends. Is that it?”
“I told him he was wrong.”
The few facts that Jay had at his disposal didn’t seem to lend themselves to a credible interpretation. Why did she continue her friendship with a man she no longer saw romantically and knew to be a Nazi sympathizer—or was he? And whom did she really work for? She had used the word “jeopardizing” and then corrected herself. If Jay had nearly ruined some operation, what was it? He tried to trap her.
“From interviews I conducted after the riot, I know that some Friends have doubts about Axel’s loyalty.”
She looked amazed. “You’re lying!”
“Not so,” Jay prevaricated.
“If you’re right, his life is in danger.”
“I can’t get too excited about a dead Nazi sympathizer.”
She paused. “I may no longer have any romantic feelings for Axel, but that doesn’t mean I want to see him dead.”
Jay’s churlish response had not won him any points; worse, it had not shed any further light on her relationship to Axel and his—or hers—to the Friends.
They finished their sodas in silence. Arietta’s brown study told him that she was mulling over his lie.
“What exactly did you learn about Axel? Did anyone say why they thought he was a plant?”
Stumbling through a flaccid explanation that he feared would expose him as a self-serving liar, he ended up repeating himself, “That’s what some of the Friends are saying.”
“But in what context? How did it come up?”
“They said that for some time now, they have felt as if all their private meetings and correspondence have been known to the authorities in advance.”
“That’s hardly surprising,” she whispered, “given their beliefs . . . but why Axel?”
Grasping for a reasonable explanation, he said, “Maybe it’s because he’
s been seen with you and you were present at the time of Heinz Diebel’s murder.”
In a panic, Arietta exclaimed, “What in the world would I have to do with it? Why would my company or my presence at Dreamland jeopardize him?”
There was that word again. He began to feel as if he had entered some other dreamland where appearance and reality had merged so completely that he had no way of determining one from the other. But then, he had contributed to the Alice-in-Wonderland effect with his own fabrications. He decided that the only way out of the labyrinth was to get Arietta to come clean.
“You must tell me, Arietta, who you work for, besides Castle House. Why have you been attending Friends meetings? To what end? Surely you know how I feel about you. Isn’t it time you told me the whole story?”
Her silence felt like a thousand years. When she finally began to speak, he sat terrified that her words would prove fateful.
“You may not want to hear what I’m going to say, but since you insist . . . Frankly, I’m ashamed. As I told you, Axel and I once dated. After we broke up—I objected to the sordid side of his life—I heard that he had a new girlfriend. Although I had started dating you, my jealousy got the better of me, and I wanted to see who this person was. I knew from my own breakup with him that he hoped someday to meet a woman who shared his political convictions. That’s why I went to the meetings . . . to spy. Isn’t that awful of me? I hated myself for it.”
Was she still carrying a torch for scarface? The secrets people store in their ghostly hearts endure for a lifetime. Her frequent absences from the city—she would be gone for days on end—made him wonder whether she and Axel were rendezvousing elsewhere.
Arietta started to cry. Moving to her side of the booth, he put his arm around her. “There’s no shame in caring for another person.”
“Yes, but while seeing you, I was watching him. I feel as if I’ve betrayed our . . . closeness.”
“Nonsense. Since meeting you I’ve seen Margie.”
“You have?” she said clearly alarmed.
“At first, but not since we’ve become . . .” He paused, searching for the particular nuance he wanted, “paramours.”
Her body relaxed, and she rested her head on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t want to lose you, Jay.” As an afterthought, she muttered, “At least not to a whore.”
“Margie’s a good friend. I could never think of her as anything but a pal.”
“Well,” she said playfully, wiping away her tears, “I’d prefer it if you thought more of me and less of her.”
5
In the ride from the pier to Newark, Axel and Arietta had found Rolf Hahne good company. He spoke flawless English and, when he said that he loved opera, sang a few bars from several Italian operas in response to Axel’s request. When Arietta mentioned her father and their plan to attend an opera at Carnegie Hall, Rolf enviously sighed that he wished he could too.
“You’re welcome to join us,” said Arietta.
“Really? How would I get a ticket?”
“Leave that to me.”
At the opera, Rolf charmed both Arietta and her father, insisting on taking them afterward to the Plaza Hotel for tea. As a result of the good conversation and Rolf’s generosity, he and Arietta became friendly, meeting from time to time to discuss music and, on occasion, current affairs. But their get-togethers left her feeling odd. Rolf always found some way to avoid talking about himself and turn the conversation to Axel or to her “friend” Jay. She had the sense that she was being used. In fact, during one of their dinners, she told Rolf that she was not an informer, a word that he scoffed at and dismissed as entirely out of place given their friendship. But why then was he always trying to find out which information she and Axel shared and for whom she worked? Of course, Rolf asked in the name of security and the greater good of the country. But which country, the United States or Germany? And he never failed to introduce the subject of the Olympic boycott, wishing to know who was really behind it. After all, the committee would be making a decision shortly, and Germany had already, at great expense, embarked on preparing for the games.
Although Arietta tried, she could never learn where Rolf lived in Newark. Was it a residential hotel, a rooming house, a bed in a friend’s home? In fact, she wondered about his friends. Did he have any, and where did he work? He never wanted for money, but what was its source? They were sitting on a bench in Weequahic Park, where the fall leaves gave the woods a fiery look. In response to her questions, he insisted that he served as a liaison between the German Olympic Committee and the American members of the IOC, and to prove it, he produced his diplomatic passport. He also claimed that he and Avery Brundage were good friends. December 6–8, at the Commodore Hotel in New York City, would decide the fate of the boycott. It was then, just two months away, that the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States would be voting on whether or not to participate in the Berlin Olympics. It was therefore imperative, Rolf insisted, that he know the names of the silent financial contributors to the boycott.
He seemed convinced, owing to German wiretaps, that Arietta had gained that information from a gangster called Longie Zwillman. But when Arietta swore that she and Axel knew nothing, Rolf grew livid. “I will not be lied to!” he raved. Arietta looked around. No other people were in hearing distance. She wondered whether to run or to stay. A new person had suddenly materialized out of Rolf’s skin. The previously courteous gentleman with whom Arietta had attended the opera had transmogrified into a minatory maniac. “You and that Casanova of yours are playing a double game.” When she tried, calmly and reasonably, to explain that he was mistaken and that she and Axel were no longer close, he grew all the more menacing. “I don’t intend to pay for the information I want. Give me the names or it will cost you your lives.” Arietta began to cry. “That won’t help. My own life is at stake if I don’t get the names.” He laughed insanely. “In fact, whether I fail or succeed I’m a marked man. But I’d rather die winning than losing. My advice is don’t cause yourself pain.”
And so matters stood until Margie found the body.
Arietta and Jay celebrated the New Year, 1936, in a muted mood. Despite Jeremiah Mahoney’s best efforts, the Amateur Athletic Union had voted 58.25 to 55.75 to support the Olympics, a two-and-a-half-point margin. (In July 1936, Ernest Lee Jahncke was expelled from the International Olympic Committee for his opposition.) After the vote, Avery Brundage issued a statement implying that a boycott would encourage anti-Semitism in America. “There are maybe five percent of the population which is Jewish. A study of the records of the Olympic Games shows about one-half to one percent of the athletes are Jewish. And responsibility for actions of this kind [a boycott], right or wrong, would be charged to the Jews, I think.”
What Berlin and Rolf Hahne quickly realized was that in spite of the vote, the pro-boycotters would continue their campaign until the day the boat set sail for Germany carrying American athletes. Rolf Hahne’s mission, therefore, continued, made all the more difficult by Arietta’s refusal to cooperate or even meet him.
Until early spring, she and Jay continued to see each other, though newspaper work taxed his time. During that period he wrote numerous reviews and articles, without a byline, a situation that actually suited him because his editor had asked him to cover the Nazi movement in Newark, and he had no desire to be mugged or even worse. In addition, at the paper’s behest, he was following the murder investigation of three men, allied to the cause of the boycott, gunned down at a Chinese restaurant by a lone assailant, who had escaped. The men, all Catholics, had helped Jeremiah Mahoney rally their fellow congregants to continue opposing the Nazi Olympics.
Given his deficient German, Jay persuaded Arietta to accompany him, in his role as Richard Wagner, to meetings of the Friends. The paper even agreed to pay her. Aware of the risk he was running by putting Arietta and Axel in the same locale, he convinced himself that
Arietta no longer cared for Axel. But he did become suspicious when she predicted the increasing radicalization and fragmentation of the Friends, who in fact eventually became the nucleus of the Bund. And his suspicions grew when Axel stopped attending meetings and she began to break dates. For reasons unknown, Jay and Arietta’s affair seemed to be cooling.
Wishing to turn up the heat, he suggested they dine at the restaurant in the Robert Treat Hotel. Arietta had suggested a less swank place on Elizabeth Avenue, but he wanted to put on the dog. She wore a red velvet dress and he a three-piece black suit. In the cab he took her hand, and she smiled. At their table, she looked around a great deal; but he could see nothing amiss. During dinner, they disagreed about some silly things and migrated to the topic of a movie that he had once reviewed, Our Daily Bread, which celebrates a commune that makes its own bread.
“If the Depression continues,” he said, “I think we’re going to see more films like it.”
“You sound like your father.”
“He never goes to the movies.”
“I’ll bet FDR asked the producers to make that film,” she said. “It’s terribly biased.”
Dreams Bigger Than the Night Page 14
