The Traitor Blitz

by Johannes Mario Simmel

  "Yes—no—oh, I'm so confused! I—forgive me, Herr Roland."

  "You may call me Walter."

  "Walter."

  "Irina." I was still standing there like an idiot with my razor in my hand.

  "You're so nice, Walter."

  "And you're so beautiful, Irina."

  Suddenly she avoided my gaze. "Ill order breakfast now," she said quickly.

  "Good. And call Bertie. He's in 512. He's to come down in twenty minutes and breakfast with us. I bet he's still asleep, but he's got to get up."

  She nodded.

  "And don't forget to order your own breakfast."

  "I won't," she said, and turned away. "Ill order tea. Lots of tea."

  "And something to eat."

  "I'm not hungry."

  She came back just as I'd taken off my pajama top. "Now what?"

  "Oh, I'm sorry. I was just going to say—I think I am hungry." She blushed. "So 111 order ham and eggs, butter and marmalade for me, too. And I don't think 111 have tea. I've changed my mind. I'll have espresso and orange juice, like you," and she hurried back into the salon.

  I took off my wristwatch and saw that it was just 9:00.1 turned on the little Japanese transistor radio, got into the hot bath, and listened to the news. Toward the end, local news, but not a word about Camp Neurode, nothing about the murder in Sankt Pauli, nothing related to our case. At the end of the broadcast I was shaving in front of the mirror, naked, and the broadcaster was

  giving us the weather. Cloudy, with rain. This thing that I was on the track of was even bigger than I had imagined; otherwise, it wouldn't have caused such a total news blackout. And then I remembered suddenly that Irina had said she would have expresso instead of tea, like me, and ham and eggs and orange juice. "At the sound of the gong it will be 9:15," said the broadcaster. And then I knew suddenly that I loved Irina.

  This had happened to me only once before in my life, and I wasn't at all sure that it was a cause for rejoicing. The whole thing tended to depress me. My last love lay sixteen years back. It had lasted only a year and a half, and had come to a miserable end.

  1"7

  The three of us ate at a table a waiter had rolled in, not a man I knew. I asked him who would be on duty at noon. He told me, and this was a waiter I knew well. His first name was Oscar, and I always called him "Herr Oscar." I was glad to hear that he'd be waiting on us that afternoon and evening.

  After I'd eaten my ham and eggs and a lot of toast, I got out paper and pen, and Bertie and I wrote the captions for the photos. Bertie had numbered the rolls of films and made notes. I drank my coffee and smiled at Irina, but she continued to look at me seriously. We asked her if she'd mind if we worked during breakfast, and she'd said no, she wouldn't. After captioning the pictures, I asked Irina if she'd mind if I smoked, and again she said she wouldn't. After three more Gauloises and a lot more coffee, the advance copy was done. Almost 10:00.

  I got up, went to the phone and asked the operator to get Blitz in Frankfurt. "May I use the phone, too?" asked Bertie. "I'll take the one in the bedroom." He had changed into a flannel suit, blue shirt, a light tie. He looked quite elegant. "Sure," I said. "Go right ahead."

  Irina made a helpless gesture. "You can stay here," I told her. "I don't have any secrets from you." And to Bertie, "Whom are you calling?"

  "My mother, of course," said Bertie, with his boyish smile.

  He called her every day if he could, even when he was traveling. Of course not from South America or Japan. When he was that far away, he cabled. He loved his mother very much, and she loved her son. Bertie said, "This is going to be one crazy day. I won't have a chance later, and I want to send her flowers. There's a Fleurop shop in the lobby. I'm sure they're open already."

  "Give her my best," I said as he left the room and my telephone rang. I lit a Gauloise. A woman's voice answered. I was in luck! It was black-haired Olga. She was best at this sort of dictation.

  "Good morning, Olga. Roland speaking. I've got something important."

  "Machine or steno?" asked Olga.

  "Steno."

  "Go ahead."

  "Okay," I said, and began. As I dictated I looked at Irina. She returned my look sadly and seriously.

  It was a big city with many people, and it was surrounded by a mighty wall, and the wall had four gigantic towers that rose up high into the sky. And monstrous figures were standing on the towers, calling out in voices that rang in the air. And Fraulein Louise was walking in the streets of this mighty city, at her side her favorite, the dead labor corps man and former philosophy student from Rondorf, near Cologne. And she was happy to have the student with her, because she felt lost and vulnerable in this terribly big city.

  And the figure on the first tower cried, "Come to me, all of you who are troubled and burdened I You are all born equall All of you have the same rights 1 All of you have the right to protection from hunger, need, and fear! Strive for happiness! Keep faith with the ideals of justice, moderation, abstinence, humility, and virtue!"

  But the people hurrying by were not born equal and did not

  have equal rights and equal protection from hunger, need, and fear; and there was little evidence of justice or virtue. Poor and rich, blacks and whites, oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited, the brutal and the brutalized, the persecutors and those they persecuted, were much more visible. And Fr&ulein Louise asked her friend, "Who is that shouting up there on the first tower?" And fche student replied, "That is the speaker for democracy."

  And the figure on the second tower shouted, "Accursed be all sinners who give in to their lust! May they be forever damned and burn in hellf ire, those who in their thoughts and actions succumb to the call of the flesh and all other earthly temptations I"

  And the people hurrying by bowed their headland looked guilty and afraid. And Fraulein Louise asked her friend, "Who is that man shouting on the second tower?" And the student replied, "That is the leader of the Christians." m

  And the figure on the third tower shouted; "Fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat! Destroy capitalism! Hunt down corruption and immorality! Build a nation of laborers, peasants, and intellectuals!"

  And the people shrank away, filled with bitterness and fears, and no one dared to look at Fraulein Louise. And she asked, "Who is that on third tower?" And the student answered, "That is the leader of the communists."

  And they walked on through endless streets and heard the gigantic figure on the fourth tower shoutii^: "Be brave and strong and prepare to give your lives to the fatherland! Destroy the monstrous progeny of the Jewish antichrist! Let purity and honor be your goal for the future of your people and the happiness of your children!"

  And the people shrank away further and hurried faster, and their faces expressed terror and fear. And Fraulein Louise asked the student, "Who is that standing on the fourth tower?" And the student answered, "That is the leader of the fascists."

  And Fraulein Louise could see that there was great misery in the city, because all the people lived under the pressure of the four mighty figures on the towers and didn't dare object but were confined and in servitude. And Fraulein Louise was filled with a great sadness—

  This was what Fraulein Louise was dreaming in an empty compartment of the local that had left Rotenburg for Hamburg three quarters of an hour after she had got out of the Cologne

  express. The train was almost empty and stopped frequently. Frfiulein Louise was determined to stay awake because she knew she had to be very careful now, much more careful than before. But she was too tired, and soon she was asleep and had this strange dream. She told me about it later, and about what happened to her in Hamburg, which I shall relate now. She said, "It was a terrible dream. So eerie. And I don't really know anymore whether I dreamed it or really saw it. Just the same, I am sure it was a blessing bestowed on me—"

  "And how did it go on?" I asked.

  Fraulein Louise said this she remembered exactly, and that she was sure sh
e had been privileged to look into the future

  Suddenly the people couldn't stand their lack of freedom and the fearful voices of the four men on the towers. The voices grew weaker and were finally drowned out by the cry, "FreedomI" And hundreds of thousands, millions of cries grew out of this one cry: "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!"

  And a revolution broke out in the walled city, and Fr&ulein Louise and the student experienced it. They saw clusters of people climbing the four high towers like ants. Many fell down, but others came to take their place, and at last they reached the platforms on which the four leaders were standing. And the masses of unarmed people fell on them, and there was wild fighting. Thousands of bodies flew through the air as the tyrants tried to protect themselves, but in the end the desperate ones won, and they pushed the tyrants from their towers and stoned them to death.

  And when the tyrants were dead, there was great rejoicing. Millions of people stormed the wall that surrounded the city, and the wall crumbled. And the masses streamed out of the city and their cries resounded to heaven: "Freedom!"

  And Fraulein Louise and the student were swept along with the crowd, and they stumbled across the ruined wall, out of the city. And Fraulein Louise thought: Now at last those who have been exploited will get their reward; those trembling with fear will find peace; the oppressed will find justice, the defeated and enslaved, mercy; and the inconsolable will be consoled. But while she was thinking this, she heard cries and saw groups forming among the masses of people, and heard voices shouting, "Now you have your freedom, but do you know what to do with it?"

  "You won't!" "We must help you!" "We'll show you what you need!" "We'll create a paradise with your freedom!" And the millions who had just obtained their freedom forgot all the dreams they had dreamed in the hell of their walled city, and let those who were screaming sell them new dreams. And the ones who were screaming were the dealers.

  The dealers extolled what their f ellowmen, still helpless and confused, would now allegedly need and what they were allegedly dreaming of—and that, screamed the dealers, was wealth, luxury, beauty, love and lust, career and possessions, fame, success, knowledge, worldliness, power, virility and adventure, and a thousand more things, and away with all inhibitions! And those who had just fled from slavery believed the dealers, and they bought and bought and soon were slaves again. And Fr&ulein Louise was filled with sorrow as she saw the faces of those who were being misled: how they withered and became ugly, were covered with boils and rotted, as in a pestilence. Now the faces of those to whom the dealers had sold wealth were distorted by greed, and the faces of those to whom the dealers had sold the wildest orgies were hollowed out, and the faces of those who had become addicted were sunken and gray. The faces of those who had sought luxury were devastated, of those who had been made all-powerful were cruel. Those whose only pursuit was their career had stony faces, those who had sought fame—vain, those who had sought property—angry, those who had sought knowledge—arrogant. And the confusion grew wilder all the time. The people bought more and more dreams from the dealers, whose voices were infinitely louder than those of the four previous leaders. "Buy! Everybody, buy, buy, buy!" And the people bought, bought, bought. But everything they bought was worthless. Because the dealers had sold them nothing but dreams.

  Hem came into my room as I was writing these pages. He read them, then he said, "What a dreaml" He puffed on his pipe and blew clouds of smoke into the air, still staring down at the pages. Then he said, "The dealers, the ones who sell dreams... we're no better. I mean those of us working at Blitz. We cater to people who live in their world as if it were a prison behind high walls. And what do we sell them? Dreams of freedom!"

  4 That was something Fr&ulein Louise dreamed when she was afraid of the big city of Hamburg and what could happen to her there."

  "It was more than that," said Hem. "With your FrSulein it's always more than that. People are still much too immature for absolute freedom. Whoever is aware of this—like the dealers in her dream—can capture people all over again and send them into the slavery of imposed information, of a consumer economy and atrocious taste, and can make his fortune with them. If people were really mature, the first thing they would do would be to free themselves of the dealers I But they are not mature and therefore cannot do it."

  I said, "And what do we dream peddlers do? We're no better than Lester, Herford, and Stahlhut. We're just as guilty. We find out how we can write to please the people best; we follow our lowest, most unscrupulous instincts, because they are always the strongest. We know that more than fifty percent of the people prefer the artificial idyll to realistic information. We make idiots of them, systematically. Does it ever cross our minds to make adult, politically oriented human beings of those who swallow our shit on—for instance—the absurd, fictitious problems of the aristocracy?"

  "But we have no intention of making adult human beings of them," said Hem. "That's why we dish out shit stories for them. In our age of increasingly perfect communication, the masses are dependent more and more on secondhand information. And that's what we manipulate. We explain a complicated world

  away with horrible simplifications. Those are the dreams we sell! We sell the 'simple' man and the 'simple' woman constant flights from reality and console ourselves with the thought that we're doing the right thing by them! Isn't day-by-day life hard and cruel enough? Don't the simple man and the simple woman deserve this escape? And apropos of the absurd fictitious problems of the aristocracy, wasn't the series 'Kings and Emperors' our greatest success, after your sex series? Weren't we able to sell monarchy as the ideal form of government for years?"

  "That goes together with our national character," I said. "With that topic our need for subordination and our desire for voluntary slavery were satisfied."

  "No," said Hem. "I don't see it like that. We're not satisfying the need for subordination; we're satisfying a genealogical craving. We sell the dream of a still-existent concept: family. Family is great and real and indestructible. We sell the dream of a life of splendor. Farah Diba and Grace Kelly. The marriages cf the rich. We auction off heroic dreams—film heroes, sport heroes, prominent people, whoever they may be. With all these stories we lull the buyers of our dreams to sleep. They forget their family worries and the uncertainty of their condition, which are causing more and more apprehension everywhere. We transfer all mass anxieties to symbolic sacrosanct figures—in the course of which, truth goes down the drain. But the reader feels better. He doesn't despair. Yet. We sell anti-despair dreams." Hem laid a hand on my shoulder and said, "And now go on writing, Walter. And hurry up. Time is pressing. And write it all. Everything."

  I said, "Yes, Hem," and went on writing.

  At about the time I fell asleep on the couch in my suite at the Metropole, the local from Rotenburg was rolling slowly into the Hamburg Station. Fr&ulein Louise had awakened out of her strange dream quite a while ago, but her heart was still beating fast. As the train had crossed several bridges, she had gained a new impression of this monster, this colossus of a city, Hamburg,

  and her courage had flagged. She had come from the solitude of the moor; she hadn't seen Hamburg in years. At the station before Hamburg, a lot of people had got in, laborers mostly. Now the train was full. The many people frightened Fr&ulein Louise— even the people in her compartment were too much for her. What will it be like when I have to get out and mill around among thousands of them? Dear God, help mel I am afraid of this city.

  When she got off the train she was caught up in a stream of travelers, all surging toward a broad staircase that led up from the platform. They bumped into FrSulein Louise and jostled her; her legs felt swollen and hurt. She staggered, the sweat rolled in little drops down her forehead, and she was breathing with difficulty. The crowd pushed her on mercilessly. She had to think of the dream again. Now she was climbing up a long flight of stairs, not easy, and there were so many sounds, so much noise, so many voices. It all made her dizzy. I must not giv
e up, she thought. It hasn't even begun. I've talked it all over with my friends, and now I have to go through with it.

  She reached the main lobby of the station. The newspaper stands and food counters were open already. Three men were standing in front of one, drinking steaming coffee out of mugs and eating frankfurters on rolls. Hot coffeel That would help. Hot coffee always helped.

  She steered her way through the crowd to the shop and ordered coffee and a sandwich. Two of the men standing there were laborers, evidendy friends, because they were talking and laughing. The third man stood apart. He was tall and thin, had a gaunt, narrow face and steely hair, cut very short. He was wearing an old cloth coat that had obviously been redyed dark blue. Frfiulein Louise, who had dealt with redyed clothes for decades, noticed this at once. It was from a uniform, thought Frfiulein Louise, sipping her coffee and eyeing the thin man; it was an English officer's coat. The padded shoulders, the cut of the waist, the broad belt at the back... yes, the coat had once been worn by an English officer.

  FrSulein Louise looked at the man more closely. His trousers weren't blue. Not dyed, she decided, but old. In spite of which they were meticulously creased. The shoes—old, too, cracked black leather, but brightly shined. Heels downtrodden. Frfiulein Louise's eyes wandered up—faded tie, out-of-style shirt, but neat. The man was shaved and had the dignified appearance of someone who had seen better days. Gray eyebrows, blue eyes.

  The eyes, in contrast to his friendly face, had a cold, aloof look. Very upright posture. How old could he be? Certainly older than I, she thought. Somebody bumped into her in passing, and his elbow knocked her heavy bag out of her hand. It opened when it struck the ground, and at least a dozen hundred-mark bills spilled out. The gaunt man stared at the money as if mesmerized, then he bent down and collided with Fr&ulein Louise, who had fallen to her knees. Tm sorry," he said. "May I help you!"

  "I—I—oh, but this is—" Fr&ulein Louise stammered. Her money! All that money! Still on her knees, she watched the gaunt man pick up the money and tuck it into her bag. The bills seemed to want to stick to his long fingers. He closed the bag and gave it back to Fr&ulein Louise, then he took her arm and helped her up. She said, "Thank you."