by Terry Frei
“She was serious, wasn’t she?” Wykoff asked. “I wonder if someone tried to interview her at the pool before her races in Los Angeles.”
“Knowing Jesse, it’ll just keep him relaxed,” Metcalfe said. “He might fall asleep on the grass before they call us to the starting line.”
Glenn joined a pack of Americans in the lower-bowl section reserved for the athletes next to the dignitaries’ area. Among the group were the two “extra” sprinters, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. From the higher vantage point, Glenn noticed how one of the cameramen—Leni’s, he assumed—seemed to be fascinated with shooting Jesse Owens’s every move, even maneuvering to be behind him.
“So what you think?” Walter Wood asked Stoller. “Any way Jesse loses?”
“It’s a longshot,” Stoller said. “But his lane’s beat up and a little wet, and if Ralph gets off to a good start, it’s not automatic. But it would have been worse if they hadn’t moved everyone out a lane and left lane one open. Even Jesse would have had trouble winning from there.”
“Jesse wins easy,” Glickman declared.
“That’s what I think, too,” Wood agreed.
Thinking about Eleanor Holm distracting Jesse and maybe him being too relaxed, Glenn grinned and asked Wood: “What odds will you give me if I take the field for a buck?”
“Anybody but Jesse?”
“Yeah.”
“Three to one?”
“Five to one,” Glenn countered.
“Okay, deal,” Wood said.
“I’ll put a dollar on that, too, Walter,” Stoller said.
“Sure.”
They shook on it.
Jesse got off to a great start, but for an instant, as Metcalfe closed in the final strides, Glenn thought he had a chance. But after Jesse crossed the finish line a stride in front, Glenn turned to Wood: “I’ll pay you back at the Village.”
The official results were posted. Owens’s time of 10.3 seconds tied the old world record—the one that still stood because of the judges’ decisions about the wind the day before. Holland’s Martin Osendarp was third, claiming the bronze medal; Wykoff fourth; and the German hero, Borchmeyer, fifth.
Glickman pointed out, “They can’t even say the German was the fastest white man! Now we see if the bastard snubs the Negroes again.”
Glenn Cunningham added, “And what happens after that.”
“They’re saying that’s not an issue anymore,” said hammer thrower Bill Rowe, who had finished fifth in his event, the best placing among the three Americans.
“Meaning?” Cunningham asked.
“Hein—he won the hammer—said the coaches told the Krauts that the Olympics people told Hitler he couldn’t congratulate the winners in his box unless he brought them all up,” Rowe said. “So they couldn’t be mad if the Führer didn’t pat them on the back in public. This is secondhand, through Hein, and he doesn’t speak English all that well.”
“Besides,” said Stoller, “he has to be careful about what he says.”
“At least this doesn’t force our hand,” Cunningham said. “Sounds like it’s not going to be an issue. But . . . like we decided last night, nobody’s going to see him, right?”
The Americans nodded.
“Everybody’s passing the word, right?”
Wood laughed. “Thanks, Glenn,” he said.
“What for?”
“For acting like I have a chance to win!”
Cunningham grinned and patted Wood on the back. “Stranger things have happened, Walter,” he said.
Glenn Morris decided that it actually took some pressure off. There was enough on him, already, as he went for the gold in an event in which only Olympic gold was noticed, but now he didn’t need to worry about what he would say to an invitation to meet Hitler in his box. Deep down, he knew there were some people in Simla and Fort Collins who might be impressed and jealous, rather than offended, but now he didn’t need to be concerned about negotiating that minefield.
Glenn decided to stay until the end of the day’s competition. He wasn’t as concerned with watching the remaining events—heats in the 800 meters and the steeplechase, plus the women’s 100-meter semifinals—as he was with possibly being able to talk with Leni. Buses back to the Village ran until midnight, mainly in case the athletes visited the Strength Through Joy restaurants or beer halls on the Reich Sports Field grounds.
With some help, Leni climbed out of the camera pit and went to the medal stand area to watch the ceremony. She thought: The primitive Americans get their awards! She also caught herself repeatedly focusing on Jesse Owens’s powerful rear end and upper thighs. Glenn wasn’t the only American who noticed Leni.
“I think the movie lady likes Jesse, too,” Rowe said.
“No way,” said Glickman. “She’s Hitler’s pal, remember.”
“She at least likes to look,” Rowe said.
“She’s doing her job,” Glenn found himself saying. He knew that could be taken several ways. “When filmmakers film things, they’re doing their jobs.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Rowe asked.
“In documentaries, they just shoot film and see what they end up with.”
Glenn was relieved when Rowe didn’t press him.
A few minutes later, Glenn laughed when the German girl involved in the ceremony handed Jesse the same type of tree seedling and pot that Corny Johnson had displayed the night before. “What’s Jesse going to do with all those trees?” Glenn asked nobody in particular. “I mean, he might get . . .”
Glenn stopped, realizing that might be a sensitive subject for Glickman, who still was awaiting word on whether he would be included in the relay.
“If he gets three, great,” said Glickman. “If he gets four, I’ll be . . .”
Stoller interrupted. “Did you see that?” They looked at him, and he was pointing at Jesse, who had walked away from the medal stand and was beneath the box seats and Hitler’s loge. “He just nodded and waved up at Hitler!”
Wood scoffed, “How do you know he was waving at Hitler? There are a hundred thousand people in this stadium. Could have been at the writers behind Hitler. Could have been someone else.”
“I could tell!” Stoller claimed.
Rowe said, “He could have been saying, ‘Take that, asshole!’”
Cunningham said, “I guess we’ll just have to ask.”
Owens was swept up, though, to go and speak with the writers, so the question was going to have to wait.
Glenn returned to the infield for the steeplechase heats and made a point of moving to the outside edges of the infield and cheering on the three Americans—Harold Manning, Joe McCluskey, and Glen Dawson. He laughed to himself, thinking that if everyone decided he was the consummate teammate, maybe more of them would show up to root him on in the decathlon.
Suddenly, during the last heat, Leni was standing next to him, a half step back—Glenn assumed, to make it less obvious. She seemed to have shaken Rolf Lantin, her still photographer shadow. As the runners went past and then were on the other side of the track, she said, “If you can, meet the car in the platz underneath the Bell Tower at 19:30 . . . 7:30.”
“But . . .”
She was gone.
21
Leni’s Idea
Kurt was his driver again and he gave Glenn a jacket to put on over his American team sweatshirt. The elevator operator was a different man than before, though, and Glenn again realized Leni was counting on the discretion of many folks in her life.
After his knock, she called out for him to come in, and it sounded as if she was in another room. Opening the door, he stepped inside and saw a bottle of wine on the dining-room table with two glasses. “I’ll be there in a moment,” she called out.
When she came in, she went right to the door and locked it.
“You are my captive,” she told him, smiling.
She hadn’t changed clothes from the stadium, but she looked as fresh as if she had stepped out of
the bathtub an hour earlier. By now, Glenn understood that once she got into high gear—and that seemed to be often—her energy was boundless. Her kiss and hug were emphatic, but short of being a sign to Glenn that they would be rushed. She motioned for him to take off the jacket, then threw it on a chair in the corner and stood back, looking at him.
“My, my, my,” she teased, nodding at the lettering on his sweatshirt. “A very handsome representative of the USA. They must be so proud of you back in Colorado.”
“They’ll be more proud if I win Saturday,” he said. “If I don’t, I’m yesterday’s news.”
Leni was confused. “What is ‘yesterday’s news’?”
“Washed up,” Glenn explained. “A has-been. A nobody.”
Leni’s look remained blank, so he tried again.
“A failure.”
“Really? Is Herr Blask a failure because he finished second in the hammer toss today—and to his own German countryman? Is your Metcalfe a failure because he didn’t get the gold and your Owens, did? With all the athletes here competing, you are saying that winning the gold is all that matters?”
“Well, how else am I going to get in your film?” he asked with a grin.
Leni poured wine into the two glasses, handed one to Glenn, then raised hers. “To the Olympics and your gold,” she said.
“To the Olympics and your movie,” Glenn said as they clinked.
Glenn sipped. Leni drank.
Then Leni asked, “What do you think your America will think of Negroes winning your gold medals?”
“What do you mean?”
Be careful. “Will the high jumper and Jesse Owens now be able to drink from water fountains in your country? Or eat in all the restaurants? That is all I meant.”
“Maybe it will help us make some progress,” Glenn said. “I also think if Hitler had met Corny—the high jump winner—or Jesse, it might have helped Americans think he isn’t so queer.”
“He had to leave before the high jump winner was free and they told him he couldn’t receive the winners any longer,” Leni said. “None of the winners.”
“Yeah, that’s what we heard,” Glenn said. “Would he have congratulated the Negroes, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I can tell you, though, that the director of German Sport was telling the Führer that he should meet the Negroes, and then the Führer could ask if the leaders of any of your Southern states would do the same thing.”
“That would have made things more interesting,” Glenn admitted. “But . . .” When he paused, Leni signaled for him to continue. He said, “But then Jesse might have asked him about the Jews.” Glenn thought: Actually, I’m not sure Jesse is a real political guy, but . . .
Leni smiled darkly. “That would have made things more interesting,” she said, gently mimicking. “But I’m told that his security men really did say the Führer should leave before the end of the competition for the day.”
“I’m surprised you were able to come home, the way you were running around, all the work you have to do.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe all the shit I’ve put up with the past few days,” she said. “I probably crossed the line a little bit. I forgot I should be concerned about my parents, too. I deal with some very petty people. I needed to get away for a few hours before I said or did anything more. I’ll say I was at the Geyer Film Lab, but just run by there on the way to the Castle for the meetings with the cameramen.”
“My teammates have noticed you,” Glenn confessed with a grin. “I hope you don’t mind. I think a couple of them wanted to ask you to dinner.”
“Mind? When they stop noticing, that is when I know I must become what your people call a ‘character actress,’” she said with a laugh. “When I get back to dramas, I will want to be the lead! I hope I have a few more years.”
“I think you’re safe,” Glenn said.
“Are you hungry?”
Glenn admitted he hadn’t had anything since a quick snack at the noon hour. Leni told him dinner was on the way from another of her favorite cafes. “It will be wonderful, but I have been assured they will not send too much food. Are you down to your competing weight?”
“Just about,” Glenn said. “Maybe a few more ounces.”
“Well, you’re still in your practice clothes,” Leni said. “You could just go out and run a kilometer or two after eating!”
“Not a bad idea!”
She laughed and pointed. “What’s underneath that sweatshirt?”
He lifted up his sweatshirt to reveal the shirt that said: “property of colorado aggies athletics.”
“What’s ‘Aggie’?”
“Short for Agricultural. We’re Aggies . . . and damned proud of it.”
“If that’s something to be proud of, I commend you,” Leni said, smiling. “I asked because I’d say we could be sitting here when they bring in the food, but if they see your sweatshirt—or even that T-shirt—it might be too much to expect the man to keep quiet. The men working in this building, I trust. They lose their jobs if they don’t respect the privacy of the residents. One man from a café might find it too tempting.”
The knock came moments later. Leni pointed to the bedroom, so Glenn moved there and closed the door behind him. He heard the conversation in German in the dining room, noticed it had stopped and heard the front door close. He poked his head out. On the table was a small-portioned three-course dinner on platters, with an empty plate for each of them.
“Looks great!” Glenn said.
“It is.”
“But where’s dessert?” Glenn teased. “No apple strudel?”
“Your weight, remember? We’ll just have to come up with our own,” Leni said.
They did. In bed after, Leni perched on an elbow and looked at Glenn.
“Was that better than a run on the street?”
“Oh, yeah.”
She inhaled a couple of times and seemed about to say something. She waited. Finally, she said, “You are proving to be quite a distraction.”
“That’s all?”
Touching his face with a finger, she said, “I said I wouldn’t fall in love again. Couldn’t get hurt. Couldn’t be distracted. Couldn’t end up having my lover saying choose between him and my art, which is what happened—even if they didn’t see it that way. They should have known, I don’t do things by halves.”
“I understand that.”
“I love you,” she said.
Did I hear that right?
Softly, she continued, “So what about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“It isn’t a hard thing to say, Mister American Hero. You can say it: ‘I love you, too.’”
He paused, thinking of the meaning, thinking of Karen, thinking of the complications . . . and then thinking of the moment.
“I love you, too.”
They kissed, and the lovemaking this time was more tender.
Glenn sat at the dining room table an hour later, drinking water, as Leni rushed around, getting ready to leave. She joined him and poured herself a glass from the pitcher.
“We need to face something here,” she said.
Glenn waited.
“This is very powerful,” she said. “If you think I will be able to say good-bye and that’s it, you are wrong.”
Glenn didn’t know what made him say it. He at least smiled. “Is that a promise or a threat?”
Leni looked hurt. “You think of it that way?”
He reached out and took her hands in his. “I was joking! That’s what we Americans do when we are embarrassed. Leni, you keep forgetting I’m a Colorado country boy. If anyone had told me even last week, and for sure last year, that something like this could happen—with someone like you—I would have laughed in their faces.”
“All right,” Leni said, wiping away tears.
“I don’t know what happens, either,” he said. “But I’m sitting here thinking you’ll be able to go back to your life—you
r busy life, your famous life—the second I leave Berlin, and if I pretend anything different, I’ll be the one hurt. And you do forget, there is a girl and a life back home for me.”
“Again . . . do you love her?”
“I thought I did. Now? I’m not so sure. If I loved her, would I be here? Maybe that’s trying to rationalize. But my world has changed quite a bit.”
“Enough that that you’d thinking of moving here to be with me?”
“What?”
“Americans live in London,” Leni said. “Americans live in Paris. Americans have lived in Berlin. Some of them have done it for love . . . or their art. They are not turning their backs on the country.”
“But here? Now? It’s different now!”
“I know that!” Leni exclaimed. “But this saber rattling, this talk, all will calm down and we will find—I am hoping, at least—that even Hitler wants peace. He will settle for restoring order and prosperity. He is a lot of things, but he is not stupid. This maneuvering is to strengthen his hold on power. He wants to make sure the world lets him continue to rebuild the armed forces—putting us on equal footing with the rest of Europe again. That’s all. It’s the same with his Jewish policies. He will step away from the extremes.”
“That’s all a little over my head,” Glenn said.
“Oh, stop playing the farmer boy,” Leni said. “You are not ignorant.”
“I’m not. But I’m trying to tell you . . . I’m trying to sort it all out.”
“So . . . hear me out. You stay or you go home, take care of some things, come back to Germany. With me. I put together this film. Glenn Morris in Olympia.”
“What if I don’t win?”
She ignored that. “And we have a love story of our own in the making,” Leni said. “A love story we can proudly share with the world.”
“You didn’t answer me. What if I don’t win?”
