by Terry Frei
As Glenn finished sealing the envelope and placed it on his nightstand, there was a knock on his door. It was the young steward from the Honorary Youth Service assigned to the building. He handed Glenn a small envelope. “A letter for you, Mister Morris,” the boy said in his precise English. “It was left for you at the gate, not posted, and they called for me to come get it right away.”
A few letters had been waiting for Glenn when the team arrived, but he still enjoyed seeing the address on the envelope, as if it were confirmation that he really was at the Olympics:
Mr. Glenn Morris
American Olympic Team
Olympic Village
Berlin
The return address, though, was what really got his attention:
L. Riefenstahl
Olympia-Film
Castle Ruhwald
Berlin
“I am to return in thirty minutes to see if you have a return note for me,” the boy said. “The driver is waiting, I am told.”
Excited and a bit confused, Glenn thanked the boy, closed the door, then opened the envelope and read the handwritten note on Leni’s stationery. She wrote that it had been a wonderful experience to meet him. She thanked him for allowing her crew to shoot him putting the weight that day. She told him that before the Games began, and they both became so busy, she would enjoy getting to know him better, since he was so likely to be featured in the film. She would have her car pick him up at the front gate at 19:45 (or 7:45) the next evening, and he would be brought to a dinner in Central Berlin—unless, of course, he had a previous commitment or otherwise was unable to leave the Village. If either was the case, she would understand. She said she hoped whoever delivered the note had asked him to write her a return note and send it back via her messenger. And she said that for many reasons, she asked that he not tell the other Americans of the meeting. She closed with: “Come hungry.”
Glenn read the note four times, trying to read between the lines. Was this as blatant as it seemed? She was a world-famous actress, for God’s sake, four years older. Or was it truly only a social gesture, “a dinner,” one that would find him dining with Leni and seven other members of her crew—or even with her and her lover of the moment, whoever that was? Was he imagining things, including the intrigue and even a hint of danger?
This is like Claudette Colbert asking you to dinner! You’ve never met a woman like this in Simla. Or Fort Collins. How your world has changed in the past few weeks! And this, before the Olympics have even started!
Glenn again used the Olympic Village stationery supplied to the athletes.
“Thank you for the invitation. I will be at the gate. Sincerely, Glenn Morris.”
After the steward picked up the note, Glenn had trouble getting to sleep. Then, at some point in the middle of the night, when he was dreaming of Leni in the costume on the movie poster cheering him on in the pole vault, he suddenly was awake. He was awake because Wood, who had turned on his desk light, was standing over Glenn and shaking him.
“Jesus, this time, you were talking to beat the band!”
Glenn, still groggy, just stared.
“Sorry,” he said, finally.
Wood went back to bed and turned out his light. A few seconds later, he spoke up in the dark. “You must be pretty stoked to be in that Olympics movie. Or be all horned up to chase after her.”
“Why you say that?” Glenn asked, dreading the answer.
“Shit, it was ‘Leni this,’ ‘Leni that,’” Wood said. He laughed. “Don’t worry, as near as I can tell, you weren’t tearing her clothes off or anything. Or you weren’t screwing her over there by the lake with the Australians watching.”
Glenn was almost asleep again when Wood’s voice again broke the silence. “You know, don’t you, she’s probably got a general for a boyfriend or something,” he said. “Or even . . .”
Wood didn’t finish the sentence.
Glenn pretended he didn’t hear. He might be right about the general. But until I know different, I’m going to assume Time magazine knew what it was talking about when it said she wasn’t fucking Hitler.
When he was asleep again, his dream was of being on one side of a restaurant booth, with Hitler and Leni, looking cozy, on the other.
If he talked, though, Wood didn’t tell him about it the next morning.
13
Sauerbraten, Champagne
At the Village track, Glenn ran several “sets”—racing 100 meters three times, 200 meters twice, then 400 meters and 800 meters. Then he started over. “Whoa, you’re going to leave it all here,” Brutus Hamilton lectured him. But he kept it up.
As he cooled down, trotting slowly around the outside of the track as others went harder on the inside lanes, he thought: That’s probably five pounds right there! Marty Glickman had worked out hard, too, and they found themselves warming down together. As they gathered up their sweat suits, Marty admitted that he still didn’t know what was going on with the relay. He explained that Lawson Robertson, the head coach, was being paid to allow a press service to distribute a ghostwritten column under his name from Berlin. Problem was, in the latest dispatch—or so Marty was told—Robertson outlined a plan to have Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe, and Frank Wykoff all on the 400-meter relay, with the fourth spot determined in a “runoff” competition among Glickman, Sam Stoller, and Foy Draper. Robertson was claiming to the runners that the writer “ghosting” the pieces after talking with him misunderstood. “I’m not sure I believe him, though,” Glickman told Glenn. “Interesting how the only two Jews on the team would be going after one spot—and against Draper, too.”
Glenn was gratified that Glickman now seemed to be considering him a confidant.
As Glenn, wearing his blue USA Olympic team blazer and the gray patterned slacks, passed through the gate area, a tall, middle-aged man in a chauffeur’s uniform was waiting.
“Mister Morris?”
Glenn reached out his hand. “Glenn Morris,” he said.
The chauffeur already had turned. “This way, please,” he said.
Glenn followed him to a big, black, four-door car. The driver opened the back door on the passenger side and leaned in, then pulled out a black suit jacket. Glenn didn’t notice the jacket at first, though, because he couldn’t resist going to the front of the car, checking out the grill and the Mercedes-Benz ornament above it.
He called out to the driver, “What model is this?”
“Mercedes-Benz D 260 limousine.” He had a little trouble saying the number, but his English otherwise was good.
The driver held out the jacket. “Fraulein Riefenstahl suggests that you change into this, rather than your Olympic jacket,” he said.
Glenn slipped off the blazer and tossed it in the back seat. With the driver still holding open the back door, Glenn donned the black jacket. “Fits perfect,” he told the driver, who shrugged. Glenn leaned down to start through the back door, and then stopped. “Do I have to sit in the back? Might be able to see more in the front.”
“Sir . . . please,” the driver said, nodding at the back seat.
As car pulled away, Glenn asked, “Where are we going?”
Still looking straight ahead, the driver said, “Café Halder. On Unter den Linden.”
Twenty minutes later, despite attempts at small-talk conversation, Glenn had gotten little out of the man except his name—Kurt. As the limousine approached the café on a corner, Glenn noticed the Olympic flag hanging outside, amid all the huge swastika banners on the poles up and down the street. As he stepped out of the car, he smiled as he thought of spotting the Café Brandenburg’s motto in Milwaukee a month earlier: “You’ll Think You’re in Berlin.”
I really am in Berlin!
“The maitre d’ will escort you to your room,” Kurt told him.
“My room?”
“The private dining area.”
The stuffy and plump maitre d’, in his mid-forties perhaps, didn’t seem to change expression when Glenn
said simply, “Glenn Morris.”
“Amerikaner, sehr gut,” the man said. “Komm mit mir.” His gesture made it clear: Follow him. They walked between tables, past booths, past well-dressed couples and groups of men, through a door and into a small room decorated with what seemed to be expensive paintings. There were four booths, but none were in use. The maitre d’ gestured at a booth—sit!—and left. Glenn was alone. He didn’t have a menu to look at to kill time. But a couple of minutes later, he heard cheers and applause out in the main room. Leni slipped through the door and then slid into the booth, on the other side, reaching out. Glenn took her hand. She wore an elegant dark gown.
Well, this isn’t going to be me and a bunch of others, too.
“I hope you didn’t have to wait long,” she said.
“I didn’t.”
“We had to go over the final arrangements for the airborne cameras.”
“Cameras . . . in the air?”
“In the Hindenburg airship, in an airplane, and in balloons,” she said. “The organizers and the Gestapo, too, wanted to know what to expect—and not to expect—over the stadium. I am getting close to being ready, but from here on, it will get even more demanding.”
“I understand.”
“For both of us, of course,” she said. She nodded in the direction of the café’s main doors. “And shall I assume that Franz out there was rude to you?”
“Well . . .”
“He was, then. I am very sorry; I had forgotten that he still is very bitter. He often talks of the Battle of Belleau Wood in the Great War. He was in it. Lost a lot of his friends, he says. The more he drinks, the more he tells.”
“That battle was against us? The United States?”
Leni’s look made it clear she was trying to decide if he was serious. “Yes, but such a disagreeable subject, I am sorry. Enough. No more talk of war.”
Leni lifted her hand. A waiter appeared out of nowhere. Leni spoke to him. He nodded and left.
“We’ll start with champagne,” she told Glenn. “If your training allows it.”
“We’re really not supposed to, but nobody really pays attention to it,” Glenn said. “ I’m not much for drinking, though, I have to admit.”
“You’re not one of those crusaders, are you?” Leni asked. “What did you call it? The ban?”
“Prohibition,” Glenn said. “And no, I didn’t care one way or the other. Now, I just know myself. I stop at one . . . of anything. So one glass.”
“Whatever you say,” Leni said with a grin.
Glenn couldn’t resist asking, “Is anyone else coming?”
“I hear you met Max Schmeling, so I thought of inviting him and his wife—she is an actress, also—but I didn’t.” She grinned. “So you will have to make do with only me.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Glenn said. “I was just curious.”
For a moment she looked down and, for the first time, seemed almost sheepish. “Now, everyone out there at the tables is trying to remember who—if anyone—walked in here ahead of me,” she told him. “They will try and stall to see who comes out with me.”
“Nobody will recognize me.”
“Don’t be so sure. They have been selling the Olympic programs for weeks now. And your picture has been many places.”
Glenn for a second thought of the reaction if American writers got wind of this dinner . . . what was it, a date? Or even the German writers. He pondered the reaction in Colorado if the reports filtered back, especially to Karen. He would write: This woman is making a movie about the Olympics and we talked about it.
“Unless you object, we will have sauerbraten,” Leni said.
Before it arrived, he also had a second glass of champagne. He got a little lightheaded. Leni had four. She was unaffected.
Glenn was amazed that the waiter’s timing was perfect. He was there for the emptied glasses and the last bites, and the courses arrived at pauses in the conversation.
Early on, Leni apologized for her English.
“I was about to compliment you on it,” Glenn said. “I understand you better than some of the Southerners on our team.”
“Still, I am trying to make it better,” Leni said. She lowered her voice, and Glenn could barely hear her. “If I am to break out of this box, I must do that.”
Leaning back, she looked him in the eyes. Understand?
“So, now tell me,” she said. “Is Simla a big city?”
“It’s tiny,” Glenn said. “After New York and then here, it seems smaller all the time.”
“But you went to university.”
“College, yes. I played football. Our football, not your football.”
“My researchers say you are new at the decathlon. How can that be?”
“In our country, nobody starts out a decathlon man. The decathlon finds you. You can do a little bit of everything, and somebody says, ‘Why don’t you give it a try?’ America pays attention to it only every four years.”
Leni touched his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m interviewing you. You must think I’m like a fat journalist with bad breath smoking a cigarette and holding a notebook.”
“Oh, I don’t think that,” he declared.
They both laughed.
“But I have to ask,” Leni said. “Why was your champion swimmer eliminated from the team? It couldn’t have been just . . .”
She lifted her champagne glass.
“. . . this, could it?”
Glenn said, “It was because she did it so openly, even after they warned her to not flaunt it.” He sensed Leni had a reason for asking, so he continued. “Why, what did you hear?”
Leni leaned forward. “I heard that your officials said she was telling other women athletes that at some point during the Games, they needed to make some very public protest against the treatment of Jews in the Third Reich. That she had said it was going to have to be up to the women because you men didn’t have the courage.”
Glenn thought for a few seconds.
“I never heard that,” he said. “I also think that if it was true, and that’s why she was thrown off, she would announce that and have much of the American public on her side.”
“Would she? Are you sure of that?”
“Yes,” he said emphatically.
“And you would be on her side?”
“Absolutely. I hope that doesn’t offend you.”
She dismissed that with a wave.
Glenn said, “But the main thing is that Eleanor has been blasting Brundage and our Olympic folks, anyway. So that’s another reason why if she was tossed for trying to lead a protest, she’d be telling the world that. She has no reason to hold back.”
Leni said, “Well . . .”
“What?”
“Your Mister Brundage told our Olympic people if she brought the Jewish issue into it, there were maybe some things she had done on the ship she wouldn’t want her husband to know about. Things they knew about.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Glenn said. “She did a lot of drinking and flirting, but I didn’t hear of anything else.”
“The offer’s always open,” Eleanor had said. Well, except for that.
Glenn continued, “I think once the stories got started about her, people couldn’t stop—and the stories about her got out of hand.”
Leni laughed darkly. “That sounds familiar.”
After Leni and Glenn finished dinner, the waiter cleared away the plates—and that would be the last they would see of him for the next twenty minutes.
Glenn plunged. “What do you think of the Nuremberg Laws?” he asked.
“I filmed that Party Congress last year for yet another documentary,” Leni said. “I didn’t mention the laws. Does that answer your question?”
“Not really,” Glenn confessed.
“Glenn, I have been in the film business since I was very, very young,” she said slowly. “I have worked with many Jews. Your own Universal Studios put up a lot
of the money for S.O.S. Iceberg, one of the last films I was in, and many in that company are Jews. What difference does it make what you are if you advance the art? None!” She laughed. “Mainly, the only Jews I don’t like are the critics. But that is not because they’re Jews. It is because they’re critics. Most of the critics, whether Jews or not, are . . . how you say it . . . ‘assholes,’ anyway. But the Jewish issue, here in Germany now? Many of us believe that this is more posturing by the National Socialists than it will be policy.”
“I’m sorry for being so dense,” Glenn said.
“What’s ‘dense’?”
“Being a small-town boy who’s still trying to figure out the world. I told somebody the other day—one of the Jewish fellows on our team, in fact—that I wasn’t brought up to look around and take note of what everyone was. Some people would make cracks sometimes, but most of us really didn’t think that way. In the country, we were all the same, anyway. I didn’t even see a Negro in person until a couple of years ago. So if I’m ignorant about some things, I’m . . . well, I’m not sorry, I’m just trying to explain.”
“Something tells me you’re more worldly than you admit,” Leni said, taking the sting away—while also teasing—with a caress of his hand. “They say you were president of your university.”
